Poor kids who push through all of the stuff above and get through to college are still less likely to wind up on top than rich kids who never even got a college degree.  Rich kids without college are 2.5x more likely to wind up in the richest fifth than poor kids with college. 

10.  Inheritance Flows In

If that wasn’t enough, rich adults get some extra help, usually mid-life, in the form of inheritance and other wealth transfers from their rich parents.  The wealthiest 1 percent (in the SCF survey, which is less wealthy than the real 1 percent no doubt) have inherited an average of $2.7 million, 447 times more than the least wealthy group of adults. 

11.  An Adulthood of Serious Inequality

The fact that class is transmitted down generations might not be so bad if differences between classes were pretty minor.  But they aren’t.  We are a remarkably unequal country compared to those at similar levels of development. 

Class haunts people from womb to grave, limiting their ability to flourish and pursue the good life as they define it.  Confronted with the reality of our society’s entrenched class system, our national politics in its present state offers three responses.  The first response is to deny reality altogether, usually in favor of an anecdote or two.  The second is to accept that it exists, but pretend there is nothing you can do about it because those on the bottom are inferior (see Murray, Ryan).  And the last response is to note it exists and offer lukewarm solutions that nibble around the margins of the problem without ever doing anything that might actually even things out.