I grew up in social housing in Western Europe, my family had zero net worth but did live in cheap subsidised rentals, with an extra rental subsidy. My classmate

I grew up in social housing in Western Europe, my family had zero net worth but did live in cheap subsidised rentals, with an extra rental subsidy. My classmates lived in million-dollar homes a 10 minutes away. Obviously there were differences in our lives and the opportunities we had. Yet they were nowhere nearly as different as a net wealth gap of 1 to 100 [0]. At the end of the day we went to the same schools, lived in similar neighbourhoods, went to the same football club, same parks. I didn't holiday in New York like classmates did, but instead went camping in a tent in my home country or a neighbouring one. Our toys looked very different. But I got a free computer from the municipality, I read all the books I wanted through the library, as a low-income fam we got free tickets from the municipality for fun things like the swimming pool or museum, and I mostly had similar experiences and opportunities. Healthcare was free till 18, since then it's the same 110 euros a month for universal health insurance that everyone else has, if you make less than the median annual income you get a 90 euro subsidy per month. University was 80% paid by the government for everyone, and because we were poor I got a subsidy to cover the remaining 20% + a little extra. If you look at all the benefits we enjoyed, the after-tax and after-benefits income difference between rich and poor wasn't all that great, and the impact it had on me as a kid wasn't that great. The effective income and its impact between me and my rich classmates was substantially different, don't get me wrong, but we're not talking orders of magnitude here. And the wealth locked up in my classmates' homes didn't make that big of a difference. I feel I had a very rich life as a kid from a poor family. At age 25-35, is when the bigger differences started. Much of that home equity of the parents gave my classmates a leg up on the housing market. That made a massive generational difference (although it turned out fine for me, other poor classmates definitely didn't). Nowadays we also see a lot of private tutoring come into play at younger ages, that wasn't a big thing when I was a kid, and it's increasing the gap between rich and poor, too. Anyway, that's just my personal experience in western europe. This plays out quite differently in the US where there seems to be much more segregation (poor and rich go to vastly different schools), no universal healthcare or college etc. If I had to choose a place to be born and had no clue where the family I'd be born into would be on the socioeconomic ladder, rich or poor, I'd not choose the US, I'd probably choose a country in Europe. (although on a city-level, some American places are doing great things, too). I'm very grateful for this time. I now earn a multiple of the average annual income and own my own home, and quite happily pay a substantial tax. [0] Black families with kids having access to barely 1 cent for every dollar enjoyed by their white counterparts."