Everything You Know Is Wrong.

It's funny how politicians predicate their fortunes on what they perceive as a stable and unchanging economic fortunes. They assume that the poor folks they champion today will always be poor, and that the rich folks they villainize will always be rich. Well that's not exactly true. It seems that of men born in the bottom 25% of income, 32% of them end up in the top 25% of income. And vice versa. The Romans used to have a goddess called Fortuna, who was to be appeased for her flippant ways. Perhaps politicians would do well to recall that those they help now, may curse them down the road for punitive taxes.
Story here.
Excerpt-or how to be a high income wage earner:
"1. High-income households are not likely to consist of one person earning a very high income (as is often assumed); rather, they are likely to have two or more income earners:
-In 2006, a whopping 81.4 percent of families in the top income quintile had two or more people working, and only 2.2 percent had no one working.
-By contrast, only 12.6 percent of families in the bottom quintile had two or more people working; 39.2 percent had no one working.
(This is Important)-
The average number of earners per family for the top group was 2.16, almost three times the 0.76 average for the bottom.

2. Census data show a large difference in full-time work and in the number of weeks worked in a year.
-Less than one-third of families in the lowest quintile had a head of household working full-time; in the top quintile, more than three-fourths of families did.
-Thus, average families in the top group have many more weeks of work than those in the bottom and, in the late 1970s, the 12-to-1 total income ratio shrunk to only 2-to-1 per week of work, according to one analysis.

3. Workers tend to start out at a low income, increase their earnings with experience, and then have lower incomes late in their careers or in retirement. For example, peak earnings typically occur in the 35-to-54 age group. However:
-In the bottom income quintile, only one-third of households are headed by someone 35 to 54; whereas, in the top quintile, more than half of household heads are in that age range.
(I want you to consider seriously the large number of single parent families in certain demographic groups AND the much earlier age of first pregnancy for those single mothers-THIS more than anything is a predictor of poverty.)
-The bottom group also has a much larger proportion of household heads more than 75 years of age — 11.5 percent versus 2.3 percent for the top group.
(This is also the result of drug/alcohol abuse that has left many grandparents in charge of raising grandchildren. So the sex and drug revolution did produce some casualties.)
-The bottom also has more young heads of households ages 15 to 24 — 10 percent

So, if you want to be wealthy, get an education, don't do drugs or alcohol, and don't have babies out of wedlock. Gee, where have I heard this all before?