That sounds like a classic "no true Scotsman". By poverty, do you mean under the United State poverty threshold over ~$12k/year? Because that's an average middl

That sounds like a classic "no true Scotsman". By poverty, do you mean under the United State poverty threshold over ~$12k/year? Because that's an average middle-class income in much of Eastern Europe. There the poverty threshold is much lower, but would also be considered middle-class in India. There's also a stronger social safety net in many countries that are poorer than the US, where you certainly don't have to worry about not getting to college (if you have good enough grades) due to family income. Binary categories such as "self-made" vs "not-self made" fit poorly in the real world and suffer due to each individual having a different threshold of self-madeness. For some people it means not having directly inherited a lump sum, for others it means having made every single cent without outside help.