With all due respect, your idea of Europe seems to be about a 100 years out of date and based on period dramas.

Their idea of USA seems even more out of date, and based on self-serving capitalist myths.

Actually my idea of Europe is based on living in it (Eastern side, to be precise) and building and running startups here.

My idea of US is based on living and working there (a while ago though) and (for the last 20+ years) watching powerlessly how more and more of the products and services I interact with and use every day are designed there (and often build in China) while the EU is becoming less and less relevant.

Are you seriously implying Donald Trump is self made? Seriously?

One singular anecdote doesn’t say much about the overall state of things. I don’t think anyone in their right mind would claim in present day that Donald Trump became wealthy without receiving significant financial help/inheritance from his family.Of course there will be some people who are rich due to the wealth they inherited from their parents, that number will not be zero anywhere.

There are multiple studies on this, but they all seem to converge on the number of around 80% of current millionaires in the US being first generation/self-made[0]. That is, the ones who didn’t receive an inheritance from their parents or other family members.

It also shows some other interesting stats, such as “only 8% of those in the study attended prestigious private schools, with 62% attending state schools.”

0. https://finance.yahoo.com/news/79-millionaires-self-made-les...

Of course not, not every single US billionaire is self made, just the great majority of them.