> Plumber sends his kids to community college and all that.

This is precisely the wrong model, one which accepts that there is no guarantee of equal opportunity. You're describing a promise almost as unworkable as the promise of heaven: if you're born poor, and you do everything well in life, your grandchildren's grandchildren will have a chance to enjoy the good life!

That is not what a democratic free society should mean.

That's exactly the point. For example, my parents sacrificed a lot of give me and my brother the opportunity to get a good education, and now when they want to retire, they are unable to do it safely, as they could not accrue the wealth required to retire. They literally lived just to improve my chances of having a good life, which I might not have even succeeded on that.

Is this fair to them? Definitely not.

Why not? Life is a team game.

Instead of ensuring certain comforts in old age, your parents made an investment into future. This way they get a peace of mind, a feeling of beating their own mortality, leaving something (well, someone) behind after they are gone. It's a great deal if that's how they see things.

It's traditionally three generations, not six. And it's just human nature to look at things in a relative sense. If you are living a lot better than when you grew up, you are very likely to be comfortable and stop there. Similarly your parents might just be happy to see you reach that next rung, rather than pushing for more.

Immigrants doing it in one generation, working blue collar jobs while sending their kids to the ivy league or med school, prove it's not based on real barriers either way.

This is not about barriers (fortunately, most of us do not live in a feudalistic or caste-based or apartheid society, where this would be literally the case); it is about probabilities and effort, even when accounting for genetic differences.

It is extremely clear that our society, nowhere in the world, doesn't offer equality of opportunity; based on your birth, even accounting for genetics, your mid-life expected income could be predicted with decent accuracy.

> (fortunately, most of us do not live in a feudalistic or caste-based or apartheid society, where this would be literally the case)

It's great that you agree with me about barriers, but you might mention it to the posters in this discussion who are explicitly making claims of feudalism and apartheid. Beyond that, my post gave a logical explanation for probabilities. I don't see where you provided a counter to that logic, or even addressed what I said. How is my statement about three generations, for example, countered by your claim about predicting mid-life expected income for a single generation?

Why does the millionaire's kid deserve a better shot at success than the plumber's kid?

He doesn't. Nobody deserves anything.

Depends on the word games being played. We don't deserve anything, but being born as thinking humans we have certain inalienable rights. They aren't "deserved", they just are.

If the plumber's kid not successful if he goes to school, gets a white collar job and generally lives better than his parents?

I think the point of the question is, that we as a society try to sell the plumber's kid on the idea that everyone gets where they are through hard work and therefore deserves what they have. But the millionaire's kid can coast into a life that the plumber's kid could likely only achieve by incredible luck combined with hard work. In light of that, the idea of the millionaire's kid deserving what they have is called into question.

Is the millionaire's kid successful if he does literally nothing in his whole life, lives off his mommy or daddy's money, and still lives better than the plumber's kid?