I think we (Australians) have a real lack of effort=success stories to draw from; if someone has wealth it was probably inherited.
In the US if you have wealth it's plausible that you had a great idea that got acquired, or a great skill.
In the US if you have wealth it's plausible that you had a great idea that got acquired, or a great skill.
But almost every wealthy American tells a story about how they did it by themselves, ignoring the schools that they attended, the services which were available to them, the people their parents associated with, and the ability to make high-risk investments because they had a built-in security net.
How to reconcile? It's fairly easy ... there aren't that many millionaires. The US has a society, culture and economy that allows for their occurence perhaps "better" than most other places. But this doesn't reflect the likely economic pathway that most of the population experiences in life.
America is good at generating millionaires (which ain't what it used to be)! News at 11!
What's lacking is a general habit of boasting about this, being wealthy, letting others in the country (ie. yourself) know about it.
You can find first generation pretty wealthy Australians in trucking, factory ownership, real estate, mining, warehouse volume sales, etc. Of those the ones most likely to be flash about their cash would be the real estate crowd, success in house sales is hard to come by without prominent self promotion.
Real estate wealth is a bit prominent, bit doesn't really have the same tone as designing or building something, more a reflection of our current dirt obsession.