Shirtsleeves to Shirtsleeves in Three Generations. Family wealth usually doesn't last very long unless it is vast and managed by people with the job to maintain it: Kennedys keep their wealth offshore and untaxed, and Rockefellers have a huge family office to protect and build the family $ - but by three generations ordinary wealth tends to be spent/wasted/diluted/frittered away by generations which are less effective at, or less interested in, wealth accumulation. Thus downward mobility.
In my work, I see as much downward financial mobility as upward. Naturally, the upward is more rewarding for me and the downward more painful to watch. I just tell myself "Regression to the mean is a law of nature."
Social class, which is more about culture than about wealth, but still implies a little loose cash, continues to be of value because of relationships, manners, life experiences, sophistication, etc. Nowadays, though, life in America is far more democratic than a generation or two or three ago when your family clubs, prep school, summer communities, and Ivy colleges guaranteed you social and occupational entree. No more pedigree in the USA, if there ever was because here "old money" was always rather new. America is far more meritocratic than it once was, but it has always been more meritocratic than Euroland or other places in general. The American Dream and all that. Andrew Carnegie: penniless Scottish immigrant makes good.
Financial mobility works both ways, goes up and down. The medium-prosperous naturally want to maintain their family traditions of perquisites and cultural advantages, but that is difficult to do for most people if they do not dodge estate taxes (which many do). Better off to have scrappy kids and if they can golf, sail, play tennis, can tell a Breughel from a Rembrandt, and have perfect dinner party manners with snappy repartee, so much the better. They can set an example for others and get on with the program.
Lefties (although McArdle is not one, really) love to focus on money and income mobility: So, What Do Your Parents Do? And Your Great-Grandparents? There are advantages that come with genes, manner of upbringing, and social background. It's the rare black ghetto kid in Baltimore or Hartford who has a prayer to escape his background. Some do, but it takes more drive and brains than for the middle class white kid in central Ohio whose dream is to get off the farm and go to New York to start a business with his or her algorithm.
The vast majority of middle-class Americans do not care much about such things and just want to build some security and comfort for their families. Many, however, are ambitious wealth-builders too. They are necessary, the job and wealth-creators. Everybody else is a parasite. Including me.
Ruling Class ain't what it used to be...
