There is story after story of people growing up in the projects and becoming a success. Without question it might be tougher but it is completely doable.
I've lived a lot in my life and have seen and experienced a lot. My dad passed when I was 10 and mom had five kids left in the house. Trust me we sure weren't middle class.
For every one person who succeeds coming from 'the ghetto', hundreds don't. If it were "doable", there'd be a lot more success stories.
You [like me] are old enough to have grown up when a job was something different, entailing security. People worked hard, and companies rewarded that - they didn't throw a large number of workers out simply to save money on labor, as they do now. They didn't engage in the many ways companies use to keep wages low artificially, like part time, 'on demand', independent contractors, moving to 'right to work' states, union busting, keeping increased profit due to increased productivity rather than share with the producers/workers, shifting health care & retirement costs to workers, changing pension plans to shift costs to workers, unpaid internships, hiring PR firms to decry wage increases - there's a million ways employers can and do stack the deck against people who work for a living, all to keep more for themselves.
Successful people generally become that because they want more [if they weren't born into it], and that's fine - we need people to lead companies [and I sure don't wanna do it, lol]. But over the last 4-5 decades, the leaders' attitudes have changed. Gone is the responsibility to look out for anyone other than themselves [workers, community, country] unless there's a PR advantage involved. Investors have changed, too, becoming 'entitled' to a profit, demanding it, even. We read the financial news, we see where investors force companies to increase profits, whatever it takes.
Abraham Lincoln said that without labor, capital could not exist, which makes labor much the superior of capital. Somehow, that's been turned around 180, which makes no sense. It also makes for a grim future, which we already see. 5 decades ago, people were happy, and the US was a great place to be in [or get into] the middle class, but we are not so much anymore. If the rich keep getting more and more of all the profit made, and the rest of us keep getting less, where does it end?
