Prior to the 40's and 50's, the average person's living condition was far worst fo the average human then today. Life was much worst then the middle of the last century. The misery of the average human was consistently high for as long a humans have been keeping records. Then humanity progressed.
For a very short period of time, life did get better for the average person in the industrialized world. Amount of time working went down (thank you union for the forty hour work week), life spans became longer (Thank you antibiotics), vacations became the norm (again the unions). The cause I think was the acceptance of Liberalism as the best mechanism of organizing a society. But starting in the early 70's that started to change. That political philosophy is has been disavowed since Reagan. The new paradigm is a form of social darwinism set in a moral framework. The rich got richer and the poor ell stay the same.
So lets talk about the wealthy, if someone is living in a million dollar house, driving a sports car and owns 3 apartment buildings on the side then they are of that wealthy class. While the data is from 2000 Census data, this would place this person easily in the top 20% of asset/income distribution. By assets alone they are wealthy. And given the lack of social mobility in the USA, the vast majority of such people are in that upper class come from either prior wealth or luck. Hard work is necessary to remain in that class, but without prior wealth or luck, hard work is not sufficient on its own to move up the social ladder.
But the conservatives I know would deny all of this and say, "What you are saying is Bullshit! It is through my hard work that I have what I have, I came from neither wealth or luck, I earned every penny that I have."
But the facts of the world just don't coincide with conservatives's world view. I think that conservatives's view is that conventional wisdom insidiously infected with social darwinism.
There are parasites in the world; they are the wealthy; the very powerful, successful, exploitive upper class. You become wealthy in the USA primarily in two ways, either born into it or become lucky. The really wealthy have to have both. Brutal fact of the USA is that social mobility is at an all time low. What we have become a caste society, where you remain in the class that you were born into unless you have great luck. That seems unfair at the very least. You cannot have a fair society that is based on luck.
The conservatives sputter "Class warfare!" The Liberals swoon. We should stop letting the conservatives get away with that line, we need to speak to the hills that social darwinism is not right, that the poor are not poor due to moral failings, the rich are not rich because of moral certitude. We need to show that there are classes in the USA and that Americans of all sorts work hard, poor or rich. We should point out that movements in the social realms happen mostly by luck not by hard work alone, and that fact is unfair. Liberals.
http://www.census.gov/...