If the young of the impoverished and lower middle classes were given the same means and opportunities to excel in all the great disciplines (sport, art, innovation, science) as the young of the spoilt, inheritant, rich and upper middle-classes, we would be living in a world saturated by greatness and excellence, instead of the minority of eltist achievement seen hitherto.
Think about all the greats of history and you'll see that most of this minority of individuals were aristocratic, rich and dripping with the sickly sap of inheritence:
Aristotle - son of the King's personal physician
Plato - descendent of the King of Athens
Wittgenstein - son of the wealthiest industrialist in Austro-Hungary
Bertrand Russell - 3rd Earl Russell, grandson of a British Prime Minister
Einstein - son of a business entrepreneur
Da Vinci - son of a wealthy Florentine lawyer
Charles Darwin - son of a wealthy society doctor and financier
Ludwig von Beethoven - German Aristocrat
Bill Gates - father a prominent lawyer, mother a banker, grandfather president of a national bank
Richard Branson - son of a Barrister, grandfather was a High Court Judge and Privy Councillor
It is obvious why greatness (individual and societal) mostly derives from wealth: changing the world costs time and money, and requires power and influence (also ultimately derived from money). Money and power provide the means necessary to fund ideas and actions, and provide the opportunities to develop such where none existed before. Those without wealth will struggle and fight against time and resource-based obstacles to achieve the same result as the wealthy.
This doesn't mean if there is no money, there is no opportunity. It doesn't mean all opportunities cost money. It means that you get many more, and more tailored, opportunities if you have money and power: with money and power you can create (read "buy") opportunities. This is because of the sad but true empirically verifiable fact that money talks: people to listen to the wealthy, people respect those who make money and people are in awe of those who are powerful. That's why everyone is trying to gain more wealth than funds their subsistence.
People who need to work two jobs to pay the bills and support their family, don't have the time or money to explore and develop the elements that lead to their or their children's greatness. They're too busy. Their kids' genius will incite merely curiosity in school and annoyance out of school. Any potential greatness in the poor will wither and die from lack of light, nourishment and care.
It is sickening but necessary that greatness is almost always the product of inherited money and power. Success and achievement are the result of mummy and daddy's wealth being poured onto the education and extra-curricular activities of their spoilt brattish children, like too much maple syrup on pancakes.
This disgusting practice occurs at the expense of the vast majority of commoners and their children, who if given half a chance and a little funding, could blow society away.
The poor are by necessity hardy, resourceful, innovative, gutsy and resilient. They have thus wrought their own genius, chiselled talent and wrung out skill in order to survive and also to live comfortably and entertained within their means.
The poor draw inspiration to greatness, creativity and expression from living a hard life. The poorer sections of society are therefore steeped in untapped genius and talent. Yet, instead of humanity benefitting from a massive source of greatness, diluting the efforts of the rich to nothing, the great of the poor grow old, unheard, and die forgotten.
What a waste.
