Becoming? This may sound like a trope and a canard, but indeed this very publication, The Economist is partially owned and controlled by the Rothschild dynasty.
>People in advanced economies stand to inherit around $6trn this year—about 10% of GDP, up from around 5% on average in a selection of rich countries during the middle of the 20th century. As a share of output, annual inheritance flows have doubled in France since the 1960s, and nearly trebled in Germany since the 1970s. Whether a young person can afford to buy a house and live in relative comfort is determined by inherited wealth nearly as much as it is by their own success at work. This shift has alarming economic and social consequences, because it imperils not just the meritocratic ideal, but capitalism itself.
>If you consider this as a whole, the growing importance of inheritance starts to become clear. In Britain one in six of those born in the 1960s is projected to receive an inheritance that exceeds ten years of average annual earnings for that generation. For those born in the 1980s, the ratio rises to one in three. The inequality of what people inherit, meanwhile, is startling. A fifth of 35- to 45-year-olds are expected to inherit less than £10,000 ($13,000), whereas a quarter are expected to inherit more than £280,000.
Moreover, how does this fact disprove the article's thesis? Is the implication that because less than 50% of people are getting giant inheritances, everything's fine?
But also there is a lot of upwards mobility.
And they do not need to be correlated even. What if rich families maintain their wealth, and meanwhile other families create wealth and become rich. How is this incompatible?
Avenues to upward mobility are blocked by these rich people through various methods.
There's increasingly less in the USA. In fact, most people today will end up worse off than their parents.
https://www.weforum.org/stories/2020/09/social-mobility-upwa...
There can be a lot of upwards mobility (say 10%), and there can be a lot of statics (say 90%)
The datapoint I remembered is that a huge fraction of billionaires wer3 first generation billionaires.
But that may not mean much for the greater part of the population.
So we may be saying things that sound contradictory, but are congruent.
Millionaires too.
The last bit is sus though. "Only inherited after making a million". Sounds like it would include born rich, high education, basic necessities covered, can work on startups without worrying about earning a salary, many such cases.
Eventually the man dying while making an income and spending no time with his child will grow to resent the one making the same income through family wealth who has enough time for that and more.
I'm not saying it is or isn't, but that would need to be the case for your argument.
Also the ratio of wealthy to non wealthy needs to be quite high.
Also wealth needs to be transferred and maintained, and not spoiled or lost.
I think those are the assumptions.
But yeah, under those conditions, the competition for resources would mean in order to move upwards someone needs to come down.
But it would need to be a zero sum economy
Falsely equating economic growth with cost of living metrics, and assuming that with more money everything can just continue happily. It’s been a very successful evolutionary niche for a handful of centuries.
Generational wealth rarely lasts more than a generation or two. Families like the Rothschilds seem to be more the exception than the rule.
Though I am not wealthy so perhaps I truly don't know what it's like in the big club I'm not in