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Rags to riches

Any situation in which a person rises from poverty to wealth From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

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Rags to riches (also rags-to-riches) refers to any situation in which a person rises from poverty to wealth.[1]

Historical examples

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Criticism

The concept of "rags to riches" has been criticized by social reformers, anti-capitalists, revolutionaries, essayists, and statisticians, who argue that only a handful of exceptionally capable and/or mainly lucky persons can travel the "rags to riches" road, being the great publicity given to such cases causes a natural survivorship bias illusion,[2] which obscures cases contrary to the rags-to-riches narrative (sometimes called riches-to-rags[3]).

Peña and Weiss argue these misapprehensions help keep the masses of the working class and the working poor in line, and prevent them from agitating for an overall collective change in the direction of social equality.[4][5]

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References

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