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Rags to riches

Any situation in which a person rises from poverty to wealth

Any situation in which a person rises from poverty to wealth

Rags to riches (also rags-to-riches) refers to any situation in which a person rises from poverty to wealth, a form of social mobility. It is a frequent trope in fictional storytelling, where it is frequently portrayed as due to talent. The process can sometimes occur in real life, but the probability for any given person is very low, and depends chiefly on luck (e.g. winning a lottery) or inheritance.

Fictional examples

  • Fairy tales, such as Cinderella and Aladdin.
  • The Dickens novel Oliver Twist, whose protagonist rises from a workhouse to child labour to a gang of pickpockets to being adopted by a wealthy family.
  • The Arthurian story of Sir Gareth, who rises from a lowly kitchen boy to a prominent Knight of the Round Table.
  • The folklore tale of Dick Whittington and His Cat, who, with the help of his cat, rises from orphaned poverty to become thrice Lord Mayor of London.
  • Many novels by Horatio Alger.

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, which obscures cases contrary to the rags-to-riches narrative (sometimes called riches-to-rags).

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.

References

References

  1. "rags-to-riches Definition in the Cambridge English Dictionary".
  2. Taleb, 2001. ''"Part II: Monkeys on typewriters; Survivorship and other Biases"''
  3. [https://www.nbcnews.com/id/wbna19193039 Riches-to-rags stories: Fallen billionaires - NBC News]
  4. Peña, 2012. Chapter 5 ''"From Rags to Riches"''
  5. Weiss, 1969. P.35
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