Good post COS, and very accurate. However what you describe here is black and white. In most real life situations though it is somewhere in between. Most modern workers have some sort of plan in place to improve their financial situation for future benefit.

I actually sat across from an investment advisor fifty years ago ( give or take a year or two), and he described it to me almost word for word exactly as you describe it here. Over this period of time I have experienced the true life fact that even though you are restricted by having to physically earn whatever money you possess, by putting that little extra effort into it and retaining (saving) the extra, it is possible to eventually reach the point where the money saved becomes the dominant factor in further accruing wealth. In other words you can move from black to white and many people do/are. In fact I would suggest that most people on this forum are somewhere in the gray area in between.

Regards

K