| A lot of people in the US seem to believe this - it's the essence of the American dream after all. But if you actually take a look at the Wikipedia article, you'll see this:
"France, Germany, Sweden, Canada, Finland, Norway, and Denmark all have more relative mobility than the US, while only the United Kingdom is shown to have less mobility [1]"
[1] http://www.economicmobility.org/assets/pdfs/EMP%20American%2... It's still possible that the majority of millionaires in the US be self-made (although I'd argue that a middle-class born Web entrepreneur cashing out is far from self-made - see other comments about the importance of a middle-class upbringing). But that doesn't necessarily give the US a very high economic mobility: here, like often, it's easy to only look at a few extreme cases and forget the averages. The way I see it, the American dream is but a myth perpetuated by the wealthiest: if I believe I'll strike it rich someday, I won't want more high-income taxation or estate taxes... even though there's actually very little chance it'll happen. |
People should be perfectly free from government interfering with their ability to pursue success, but one would expect the children of successful people to be more successful simply because of inherited traits alone. Moreover, even aside from money, to the extent that a child's environment is his relationship with his parents, you'd expect children of successful parents to be more successful.
There's also something to be said for parents being able to give their children an advantage in life.
A society that maximized economic mobility would not be a fair one. It would mean arbitrary wealth transfers from the richer to the poorer.
Personally, I'm in favor of a 100% inheritance/estate tax, with every citizen's child given an equal share of society's inherited wealth on his 18th birthday. It would be sad to give up parents' rights in this way, but I think it would be well worth it on a public policy level.