Speak for yourself. Anybody and everybody that wants to make more can and will do so. The cream will rise, just as I did.
So everyone who makes less money does so because they don't want to? That makes no sense, even coming from you.
You think like the protesters, that a job and living wage is somehow a "right". How's that working out in Greece? Lemme guess, you're just like the protesters that think a 20/hr wage is a right?
No, I don't think a 20/hr wage is a right. We do live in a society, we aren't swinging from trees anymore. Society as a whole benefits when everyone does well. Throughout the course of history you will find few examples of top heavy societies that did well compared to those that were more broad. This isn't about one person, as your world view seems to dictate. This is about everyone, about society. Society is better off when the majority of people are doing well.
A living wage (not 20/hr as your example) may not be a right, or shouldn't be a right, but it should be something that we as a society can now ensure that any able bodied working citizen should receive. Because I'm a commie? No. Because it provides for a more stable, healthy, and ultimately fruitful society. What is a living wage? Something moderately above the poverty line. If someone works 40 hrs a week, that should be enough to stay out of poverty.
As I've said time and time again, we've seen this pitch, the rise of the proletariat against the bourgeois. It's the worker getting screwed right? And that the owners of production are the root of all evil, right?
This in power will abuse it. They will take and take until they take too much and those not in power realize they are the majority, and that simple fact gives them the strength to push for fairness. Production is not evil. Ownership of production isn't evil. It just is. Using ownership of production to push for things like unfavorable working conditions are evil. Evil isn't defined within something, it is the act, specifically the intent behind an act.
Pursuit of money isn't evil, though what people do in pursuit of money certainly
can be.
This is still America, where if you want to rise you can. And if you don't, you won't.
Upward social mobility isn't very good in this country.
http://www.economist.com/node/15908469
http://www.oecd.org/dataoecd/2/7/45002641.pdf
There are plenty of factors, including personality disposition which is innate, all the way to intelligence which is also innate. You have the tools you are given to work with and not everyone can achieve the same things. Someone in the upper quarter of the intelligence bell curve will almost certainly do better than someone in the lower quarter, and "want to" or hard work will have little impact on that.
Social mobility however has been declining in conjunction with the wealth disparity increasing. Split into quintiles, very few people are now able to move more than one quintile in a generation. There are exceptions, and IIRC spidey you are one of the exceptions. Don't mistake you being an outlier (statistically speaking) as an expectation of the norm. Lebron James doesn't wonder why I am not in the NBA despite my passion for the game of basketball.
The most powerful indicator of financial success is where you started. That trumps any other factor. As a society that is not good for us because the best and brightest are not being rewarded for what they have to offer. When you have an aristocracy in place you reward birth above any other factor. How is that capitalism? It isn't about the fittest and strongest ascending, it is about the elites staying elite for generations because money has too much power in our system.