Americans will never understand. Our parents stood in breadlines. We are making six figures in America.
It's not about wealth. It's about a culture that respects hard work, education, and opportunity.
100%
i was maybe 5 and remember very vividly standing in those same breadlines with them. about once a year we got to eat bananas, it was amazing. in america there's a walmart next door to a target next door to a whole foods or trader joes, and across the street there's a meijer next to jewel and a macys plus 3 footwear stores - all filled with stuff that never leaves the shelves. and that's just within this 3 mile radius! i don't want to describe it as amazing because it is incredibly wasteful, but holy hell!
meanwhile, a large portion of the US population [that struggles to come to grips with basic economic principles] is paralyzed with fear of immigrants "stealing" jobs - usually jobs that don't even require a GED. a minimum-wage job is not a career and not meant to support a family; you're meant to grow out of it.
I worry about the next generation. They say that wealth skips every other generation, because if a child grows up in a well-to-do family, they will not value hard work as much.
Strangely, in all the empirical studies of socioeconomic status and its relations to family and environment, I've ever seen one detect that effect.
I suspect that the popular saying really just reflects that parents and children have high contact and lots of friction, and grandparents and grandchildren less so, and nothing about the reality of wealth or hard work.