[f17]

> Except there's plenty of old-money (hereditary class) in the US that looks, talks and acts exactly like the "class" structures you're claiming are very different from those in Europe. You're arguing semantics because "it's different" in the US, which may be superfically true, but not meaningfully so.

This. The idea that we were founded by the industrious poor of Europe doesn't really hold out. People came to the New World with all sorts of different motivations, and from all social classes. The rich who came over to get super-rich got super-rich and their descendants are now the elite. The poors who came over to work in the coal mines stayed poor and their descendants now work at Wal-Mart. And the one-sixth of this country whose ancestors were brought over against their will are still treated horribly because their skin color makes it evident (or at least likely).

Not only is social mobility rare, but there's a mean-reversion. Class doesn't prevent you from attaining wealth, but it makes it harder to keep it; there are so many forces in play that most people aren't even aware of, but that exist to keep long-term upward mobility at a minimum. You can get a PhD and work at a FAANG, and you're still going to lose in project allocation and in promotion battles to 23-year-olds whose fathers and grandfathers the VPs are afraid of.

[WalterBright]

What rich people immigrated here from Europe and founded dynasties in America?

How about one of the richest men in America? The son of a butcher:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Jacob_Astor#Early_life

How about the Kennedys? Irish immigrants:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P._J._Kennedy#Early_life

The Vanderbilts? From an indentured servant coming to America:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cornelius_Vanderbilt#Ancestry

[gen220]

It depends on your definition of dynasty, but they absolutely did.

Similar to the UK, most of these dynasties were based on real estate and failed to safeguard their wealth during the transition to the postindustrial era (post-civil war), unless they transitioned into finance/insurance.

Because of this, we don’t know their names today as well as we know the (post-)industrial names (your example of Astor is an exception because his story & wealth were singular, but even Astor isn’t well-known outside of NY).

John Jay, the various Roberts Livingston, the van Rensselaers,the Van Cortlandts, the Schuylers, Morris, etc.

These were people who had functionally feudal titles in post-revolutionary America, and many descendants retained them until the mid 19th Century.

They weren’t Windsors, Hohenzollerns or the uppermost crust of European houses. They were generally the descendants of Scottish, Dutch, or French elites who came to the new world once they caught wind of the killer opportunity provided by untouched and underutilized natural resources, in combination with a highly malleable set of local legal institutions. Many of them also had the motivation of fleeing asset seizures at home.

[WalterBright]

Having a feudal title doesn't mean they were rich. John Jay's ancestors came to America because the French government confiscated their property.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Jay#Family_history

I didn't look at the others you mentioned. If you've got a cite that shows they came to America wealthy, feel free.

BTW, Astor is well known on the west coast. See Astoria, Oregon.

[gen220]

I guess this hangs on your definition of "came to America rich". America was a frontier, not the kind of place that rich people came to for fun, but the kind of place that people went to escape glass ceilings and exploit natural resources for profit.

It required capital and connections to make it big in the Hudson valley: many of the wealthiest families in the US at 1776 were descended from people of relative wealth and influence (again, not Windsors and Hohenzollerns), who found the british colonies to be a place where skill, capital and connections could be compounded into meaningful wealth at a far higher rate than their birth countries.

Jay's progenitor fled asset seizure in France to take up commodity trading in NY, where he became cozy with the established elites: Jay's mother was a Van Cortlandt, themselves married into the Van Rensselaers, who were among the founders and directors of the Dutch West India Company.

(Most prominent New Yorkers of the 1770s intersect with the Van Rensselaers). Alexander Hamilton married a Schuyler, a family whose history mirrors the Van Cortlandt's (wealth deriving from the furs trade, cemented with marriage to the "Vans").

Robert Livingston the Elder fled to the Netherlands from Scotland, where his well-to-do father had faced religious persecution. He ended up in New York, where he married a Van Rensselaer widow and was granted a "patent" to 160,000 acres of farmland along the Hudson.

---

South of the Potomac River, the stories are pretty similar if you substitute "fur trade" for "tobbacco trade".

e.g. James Madison's paternal grandfather was a man of influence and landowner in Virginia, who cemented his family's future influence with a marriage into the Penn family. The Penns, along with the Baltimores, represent an extreme end of the "arrived wealthy" spectrum.

[djenendik]

So colonialism?

[dwater]

And it's still happening. America is, compared to other first world countries, not the easiest to immigrate to. So out of all immigrants, who would choose to go to America (appreciating that many immigrants don't have much choice)? The ones most aligned with America's opportunities, so people who want to be capitalists. If you value a chance at getting rich over stability and safety, come to America. If you want a strong social safety net and aren't willing to arm yourself against your neighbors, go somewhere else.