[johnny53169]

> Even so, a bricklayer who was the son of an Austrian village policeman and had a bloodline tainted by a bastard great-grandfather -- was able to marry into the Kennedy family. Why? Because Arnold Schwarzenegger became a successful multi-millionaire.

For context, Schwarzenegger met Maria Shriver after he had gotten the Golden Globe Award for New Star of the Year – Actor for Stay Hungry(1976) while in an open relationship with another woman and married around a decade later after his big breakout in Conan and Terminator.

He was by then already a successful bodybuilder, she didn't really marry a bricklayer, and anyway it's not like you can't find similar example in European nobility.

[pavlov]

European aristocracy doesn’t have a lot of taboos left around marrying from the lower classes.

Maybe the most prominent example is Victoria, the Crown Princess of Sweden. She married her personal trainer, a gym entrepreneur and son of an ordinary civil servant, who received the titles of Prince and Duke.

[bombcar]

Europeans have been famous for marrying "rich but common" Americans for so long it's a running joke in Wodehouse books.

[bleuchase]

Hell, Harry did it too.

[angrais]

I agree and you've summarised what I wanted to say.

One addition: social mobility is possible in almost any class based society. So using one such example does not prove that class in USA==wealth.