Out of the hundreds of people I worked with and kept extensive records on, I found four who were in serious financial difficulty through no fault of their own. Four. I saw people manage perfectly well on £9000 a year and people on £40,000 a year hiding their car from the bailiff.

Correlation between quality of life and income was remarkably weak - the ability of clients to stretch their income and conversely their ability to fritter it was often astonishing. Middle class clients took on unmanageable mortgages and racked up huge credit card bills. Working class clients took out payday loans every week, bought consumer electronics on expensive hire-purchase and spent their housing allowance at the pub. I did observe one strong correlation - the more serious someone's financial problems, the more likely they were to walk out through boredom or frustration, or become abusive when it became clear that I could not fix all their problems.

Of course, we have a welfare state. From my perspective, the political environment in the US seems to be dominated by people who actively hate the poor. It may well be the case that Britain is exceptionally supportive of the poor, or that American society is exceptionally hostile towards them.

That would indeed be interesting if it were true, regardless of your snarkiness. I'd be interested in seeing a show just like that regardless of how it works out.

The other aspect I see is upbringing, when all you see around is poverty and and way out being working hard, you grow a natural tendency to think of hard work that way. You also learn to live frugal, and manage even with little resources. Later on life when you earn well, these habit help in saving and making proper investment decisions.

On the other hand people raised in spend thrift environments, try to match their living accordingly. For example even if they do no have money they try to buy things through debt and credit.

Saving and making investment decisions overtime make you rich, this is obvious and nothing surprising. But people rarely realize this.

There are plenty of people who started with nothing and who, by being sensible, worked and saved and became financially successful.

hugh3 probably had such a person in mind, not someone with a trust fund who has learned to stay within their allowance.