I think we're talking about several different things here. I'm asserting that there are five essential inputs to one's economic outcome. In no particular order, they are:

1. The activities in which one engages to obtain income. This can be labor, crime, cheating and manipulation, employment of capital, or some combination of these.

2. Starting position: did you enter adulthood with an inheritance or trust fund?

3. Management: what do you do with the income you receive?

4. Environment: macroeconomic conditions and public policy (presently inseparable).

5. Luck, those arbitrary events that affect an individual or small group of people (as distinct from environmental factors that affect everyone). These can be positive or negative.

Individuals generally can control (1) and (3), though the available options and their merits are products of external forces. You seem hung up on the notion that these are the only two factors that matter. You acknowledge (5) but assert that it's ultimately irrelevant to outcomes. You don't seem to acknowledge (2) and (4) at all.

I am asserting that a high probability of good economic outcomes (i.e., financial independence) requires that at least (3), (4), and (5) all be favorable if we begin from the premise that the only sources of income and capital available are the proceeds of labor and one's own accumulated capital. That is, we're not going to cheat or steal and we weren't born into anything.

I am not asserting that good economic outcomes are impossible under other circumstances, only that they are highly unlikely.

It would be very useful to bring some data into this conversation. I would like to compare the outcomes achieved by hypothetical pairs of individuals who satisfy our constraints on factors (1) and (2) and are identical in their luck (there are no material events) and management, but differ in environment. For example, suppose that there are two individuals born 20 years apart, one in 1955 and the other in 1975. Both are male Americans, both are employed in full-time, year-round work beginning at age 20, neither is ever unemployed for any reason, and both set aside some fraction of their age-appropriate median-wage income and invest it in one of a few simple ways (we can vary that fraction and how it's invested). Each pays the taxes he legally owes and no more, and for simplicity's sake each is single and lives in a state with no personal income tax. The object of this exercise? To check in with each at age 40 and see, in today's dollars, the purchasing power of their assets and the purchasing power of the income those assets produce. We could then examine other splits; for example, two people born at the same time, one in Japan and the other in Switzerland. Or fraternal twins, one male and the other female. The possibilities are limited only by the availability of data.

It would be great to see such a study. If anyone has done it, the results are not particularly easy to find. Most of the data exists: historical tax laws from the Tax Policy Center, historical income data from the Census Bureau, deflators and unemployment data from the BLS, interest rate and bond market data from the Fed, and stock market prices and dividends from the exchanges and many other sources. Some countries keep better records than others. Having looked into what's available, I think someone could put together something reasonable in a week or two.

According to your thesis, these studies will show that everyone will obtain approximately the same outcome, because in all cases we have controlled for luck, starting position, income, and management strategy. Only the choice of management strategy will have material impact.

According to my thesis, these studies will reveal (a) that environmental factors dominate the outcomes, (b) that there are many environments in which there is no non-oracular management strategy that will yield an outcome as good as that achieved by a male American born in 1955 who employs a simple, moderately frugal management strategy, and (c) that the vast majority of environments that have existed over the past 20 years, including today's, are strongly detrimental to positive outcomes.

I assert this despite the ultra-simplified deterministic model I propose to use. I further assert that the stochastic injection of periods of unemployment (in accordance with actual historical rates) will radically worsen outcomes in at least 3 quintiles relative to the above-mentioned baseline.

Finally, I assert that these results are obvious. I'm not exactly going out on a limb here.

I know I sound like a "progressive". I am not. I do not advocate redistribution, higher minimum wages, more rent control, or a culture of victimhood. Quite the opposite on all counts. What I do advocate are changes to public policy that make it much less likely that decades of any individual's working life will be lived in an environment that strongly penalizes the proceeds of labor and accumulated capital. You should not attack me based on your preconceived ideas about "what I want", from either the markets or public policy.

More directly to the point, my original assertion was that teaching a child that factor (3) is the only one of import does him a great disservice. Prudent management of one's finances is almost always necessary but almost never sufficient. Acknowledging this is not casting blame but rather observing the world around us, thinking critically about how it works, and accepting it as it really is: healthy things for any child to do from an early age.