I see what you mean: we're bidding up the cost of entry into white-collar society, and people feel pressure to keep up with it. But... 1. The fact that someone

I see what you mean: we're bidding up the cost of entry into white-collar society, and people feel pressure to keep up with it. But... 1. The fact that someone has something you don't doesn't make you worse off in an absolute sense. I have trouble making the moral leap that we need to do something that will amount to handicapping those who have earned wealth, based only on feelings of envy in the broader population. 2. In any case, it kind of proves my main point: it's not true that only 1% is successful, and the rest of us are doomed to desperate drudgery. Your explanation demonstrates that a lot of us - indeed, enough of us to set a standard of sorts - achieve success. So the point that keeps coming up in this thread about it being a winner-take-all world where any failure dooms one to purgatory is clearly false.