Ninfa of Ninfa's Mexican Restaurant fame, a mother of 5, who started with just a taco stand.
Glenn Beck, who beat alcoholism, was the son of a baker.
Steve Wozniak, assembled the first Apple Computer in his garage.
Steve Jobs, adopted by a machinist and his accountant wife.
Henry J. Heinz, founder of the H. J. Heinz Company, the son of German immigrants, who, as a boy, sold vegetables door-to-door.
That's a very short list of very rich people who didn't start out that way. There are thousands more such stories, millions, if you count those who started with nothing and now have become admirably comfortable through hard work and their undaunted belief in The American Dream and in their ability to achieve it.
There is no "pie" of wealth, because wealth isn't finite, it can be created from nothing but hard work and a belief in your God-given abilities. It resides in the potential of each of us. WE are our own wealth, if we just choose to unleash it. But that can only happen if people are free to reach for their dreams. That's why America became so great, Americans were allowed what no other government allowed their people: true freedom to pursue their personal goals without caste-systems or other such stigma, because there are no castes or levels in America, we're all one people on one level, the American Level.
Need is the greatest builder of wealth, not greed. Have a need and satisfy it, find a need and fill it, create something that never existed before and create a new need along with it. If you believe in the "pie", you've been sold a bill of goods. That belief says that people are limited, that they can't help themselves, that they can't better themselves. That is a LIE! We are limited only by the chains we choose to wrap around our own spirits.
The American Spirit shouts, "There ARE NO chains! I am free! To follow my dreams, to better myself, to be more than when I began, and to bring others with me as I climb. To better the lot of a multitude of others because I have succeeded, so that some of them can climb, too... perhaps even further than I have!" For years Bill Gates topped the list of Richest Americans, but something many don't know is that quite a few of those on that Richest Americans list with him were his employees.
Anyone who sings the song of the down-trodden in America has put the boot on their own neck. If they're able-bodied and sound of mind, they're down-trodden because they have chosen self-pity instead of self-betterment. At some point those who have chosen to just shut up and do what needed to be done, no matter how hard or demeaning or lowly, in order to better themselves and everything around them through their efforts, will throw up their hands and say, "Enough! If you want to eat, feed yourself, because I'm tired of having my hand bitten."
Those are the facts in the Real World of The United States of America as it used to be when we still taught our children to reach for the American Dream and, if you don't like those facts, tough. The Truth is still the Truth, even if no one believes it.
In case someone has been in a coma and doesn't know, we're out of money. Our government's so broke we need a new word to define broke, because "broke" doesn't adequately express HOW broke we are. But our brokeness is a direct result of really stupid government policies that no one in the government seems to want to change. So, it seems, our real problem isn't stupid spending, it's the over-arching, permanently instituted, actively pervasive quality of our government being just plain stupid that's our problem.
Now the pointy-hats who are responsible for all that institutionalized stupidity are in the process of trying to find ways to not be stupid with our money. Lord, help us... good luck with that.
Here are a few suggestions:
Instead of taking food out of the mouths of needy children and old people, why don't we just bring our soldiers home? That would save a fortune, and do so immediately. We should pull out of all foreign wars... now. Why are we trying to force other nations to adopt our idea of how they should conduct their internal affairs? Let the UN handle those disputes.
In fact, as to the UN, we should run, don't walk, from it, and stop all funding to it. The world doesn't like us? Fine. Stop funding every belligerent, whiny government that has as its goal the plundering of our wealth and the active deconstruction of our American Capitalist system. Let them see what a world without the USA as their police force and major customer is like.
Major customer... right. As to that, end Free Trade and go back to the tariffs system, just as the Founding Fathers set up in the Constitution. Tariffs were the original method for funding the Federal Government, and the only method that was to be used. A tariff system would also result in a more competitive edge to sell goods we manufacture here in the USA, as it would work to level the playing field. China's biggest nightmare is the USA giving up Free Trade in favor of a tariff system.
Next, funding "bad actors", militant, hostile governments (like Egypt is in the process of becoming) should stop right now. Close the wallet, hide the piggy bank, don't write that rubber check! Why should we, with our huge deficits, give money to any hostile countries? Why are we building up our and Israel's enemies? That seems the height of stupidity.
Don't give Egypt that $1 billion+, since the party that's come to power is in the process of breaking the peace treaty with Israel and planning on going to war with them. The stated goal of one of the Egyptian Presidential candidates is to make Jerusalem the capital city of the new Caliphate. Isn't that nice for Israel? Egypt has already cut off the supply of natural gas they were piping Israel. That money we pledged to Egypt, along with Israel giving Egypt the Sinai Peninsula, in the Camp David Accords, was for the purpose of Egypt keeping the peace treaty with Israel. If Egypt breaks that treaty, becoming a potential threat to Israel, why should the USA fund their saber-rattling against our ally?
On a side note: Have you seen the size of the Sinai Peninsula in relation to what's left of Israel? As a result of the Camp David Accords Peace Treaty with Egypt, When they gave up the Sinai, Israel ceded over to Egypt an area almost twice the land mass of what Israel kept for themselves, as well as Israel's access to two major waterways! Would you give up two-thirds of the land area of the United States to make peace with Canada or Mexico?
Bad actors don't have to be foreign, however. As example, take our dismal, stupid-kid-producing Federal Department of Education. Since the Fed has taken over public education, scores for US children have plummeted; we've gone from near the top to the bottom of the heap. With consistent bad grades like that, what parent thinks the DoE is actually working to do anything other than insure our kids don't get a decent education? Our schools no longer educate, they indoctrinate. Ignorant, lascivious, homosexual, God-hating, Marxist/Communist, rabble-rousing, unemployable, progeny that can't add 2+2 without a calculator, now there's a parent's dream-come-true.
Than there's the EPA, who wouldn't love to see the last of them? What they do that isn't harmful would be shorter to list. There are a wealth of such money-sucking, destructive government agencies that should be done away with. The question is, why won't Congress do anything about the black hole of very wasted government spending that is such agencies, before they attack Meals-On-Wheels and school lunch programs?
Finally, open up our nation's wealth of oil-rich areas and "Drill, baby, drill!" Not to mention, getting the Fed off the backs of the Natural Gas and Coal industries. It would give us the benefit of bringing down prices at the pump and lowering all other energy prices, as well as being a windfall in revenues to government on both state and Federal levels.
There's a coal-fired electric energy plant right down the road from where my parents live in Central Texas, my brother works there. There are clouds coming out of its stacks all day long... white, fluffy clouds of pure, clean steam composed of highly-filtered-water. That's it. Just pure water, not "pollutants". Before the water is released as steam, it goes through an arduous multiple-filtering process that captures all the pollutants. Exactly how is purified-water steam a danger to our environment?
Bringing our boys home, cutting off foreign aid to hostile governments (and the UN), reinstituting a tariff, doing away with (or down-sizing and reorganizing) harmful and/or wasteful government agencies, and availing ourselves of our wealth of energy resources might not solve the debt crisis, but it would go a decent way toward paying down our horrifyingly humongous, ever-growing Federal deficit.