Talk:Rags to riches

message: Riches might not be as worthy of a goal as popular belief might desire to be so. Too, the American Dream has to do with coming here and exploiting things in order to become filthy rich? Our 400 years of history need to be rethought and retaught. For starters, the Criticism page ought to look to people who saw a more moderate mode as much preferred: Tolstoy (how much is enough?), Spinoza (enough to maintain the intellectual ability - presupposing that the physical requirements are met), any of the myriad type of folks who took the vow of poverty, and many more. BTW, making ill-begotten gains through that crazy scheme of the ca-pital-sino is definitely not to be given lots of praise (examples abound in the riches of Silicon Valley ways) as only the few can extract value. If we tried to fund all that way, there would be nothing left after the top few took theirs.jmswtlk (talk) 00:41, 1 February 2021 (UTC)
thread_title: The opposite

message: Is this a dab page or an article? It's quite difficult to tell. —/Mendaliv/2¢/Δ's/ 15:45, 23 November 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  dab or article? 

message: This entry's been added twice, and an explanation of his notability is needed.  I have commented the name out for the second time.  80.5.13.230, before he's added back again, please explain his notability.   .`^) Painediss`cuss (^`.  02:28, 16 May 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Jon J Jenkins 

message: Education (including college education) does not 'end poverty' like we've been brainwashed by capitalists to believe: "With few exceptions, the fortune-builders of more recent date, like their nineteenth-century forerunners, had little interest in school even when it was available to them... Many who weren't high school dropouts were grade-school dropouts..." Ferdinand Lundberg, "The Rich and the Super-Rich." The only way to get rich in Capitalist wage slavery is by good luck or by doing something shady or illegal as Lundberg proves (& others).  Stars4change (talk) 05:29, 3 October 2009 (UTC)
thread_title: Destroy a myth

message: Did "rags to riches" originate with Horatio Alger or become popular through his works?
According to the Library of Congress, the phrase or its likes appear in novel titles, e.g, Ragged Dick, or, Street life in New York with the boot-blacks (1868).
Certainly, the phrase is closely associated with him, as one biography demonstrates:  From Rags to Riches:  Horatio Alger, Jr., and the American Dream (1963).
Any other thoughts on this issue?--Aboudaqn (talk) 17:57, 30 March 2011 (UTC)
thread_title: Origins in Horatio Alger?

message: Shouldn't there be some sort of delineation between mythical rags-to-riches stories (fairy tales, Arthurian legend) and real stories?  It's a bit confusing when they are in a list together. 152.3.68.7 (talk) 14:23, 25 April 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  Myth and Fact 

message: What I'm curious about is "to what literary genre does 'rags to riches' belong?"  It is not listed among the genres or supra-genres in Robert McKee's book, "Story."  Not that the book is definitive.  How have others classified it?
Sysfrank (talk) 10:36, 11 September 2015 (UTC)
thread_title:  What Literary Genre 

message: What this article really needs is a section on the history of the rags-to-riches mythology in literature and folklore. I recently stumbled across Giovanni Francesco Straparola (see the "subsection" entitled "Invention of the Rise Tale") and thought that that sort of thing should be incorporated here. --Dr. Fleischman (talk) 16:50, 31 May 2016 (UTC)
thread_title:  History section 

message: Jim Morrison should be excluded from the list. His family was not particularly wealthy, but not poor either. A much better example, which is missing, is Louis Armstrong, who was raised in poverty. 2A02:810C:C240:5968:40AB:56DF:1A2F:9187 (talk) 13:19, 3 January 2020 (UTC)
thread_title:  Jim Morrison and Louis Armstrong 

message: From reading the book The Pursuit of Happyness, I'm not entirely sure if Chris Gardner should be on here.  (The film with Will Smith playing Gardner only covers about a quarter of the book.)  The family that he grew up in was actually fairly prosperous, but his step-father abused him and this prompted him to leave.
I'm not trying to denigrate the man at all.  He clearly did very well from his background.  I'm just not sure if you can call it "rags to riches" when his family were fairly well-off.  Epa101 (talk) 22:29, 25 October 2020 (UTC)
thread_title:  Chris Gardner 

message: Hey what about The Beatles? All of them came from working class families from Liverpool. I mean not as poor like Elvis but still pretty modest. Paburo fg 00 (talk) 19:32, 7 November 2023 (UTC)
thread_title:  The Beatles? 

message: He grew up poor and fatherless on a Caribbean island and rose to prominence as an immigrant in New York City.  Should he be included in the "historical" section? Buffyinfaith (talk) 21:19, 8 March 2024 (UTC)
thread_title:  Alexander Hamilton