[AussieWog93]

This is just not true, at least in Australia (and I suspect most other first-world countries, including the US).

If anything, it's easier to go from having nothing to a comfortable, middle-class lifestyle than it is to go from middle-class to wealthy.

[Qem]

First-world is not most world. And even those places face welfare state dismantlement since at least the 80s.

[AussieWog93]

Funnily enough, most of the people that seem to express this sentiment live in the first world and are educated.

I guess people who live in the third world and have mastered English see living proof every day of where their hard work can get them.