The poor get poorer and the rich get richer

Perhaps one of the most misunderstood minorities today is not racial or ethnic. In fact, the minority I’m referring to comes with people of every race, color, creed and religion — the wealthy.

Make no mistake about it — building wealth is one of the most difficult things someone can do, which is why so few people do it. How few? Wealth estimates derived from 1998 federal estate tax return data show that about 6.5 million individuals in the United States had gross assets of $625,000 or more and represented about 3.4 percent of the U.S. adult population. As a group, they owned more than $11.1 trillion in total assets, or 32.6 percent of the total U.S. personal asset holdings. That’s 3.4 percent of the population representing 32.6 percent of the country’s wealth!

The wealthy are a true minority in the world and are often criticized and ridiculed for their success in spite of the fact that everyone, given the choice, would rather try it rich than continue being poor. I don’t know where it originated, but the cliché “the poor get poorer and the rich get richer” has been in use for some time, implying that the poor will never rise out of poverty. Is this true? Why do people stay mired in poverty while others can pass on generational wealth?