>I've spent many a day doing much lower work to earn pay, believe me. My first paying job, outside of working for the family business in a dry cleaners, working the fields of a farm for no pay, or picking strawberries or walnuts all day for days on end (among other jobs), was at Kmart. I was promoted within 3 months to a supervisory position at
>17. It is indeed possible, back then, and today. Whether you continue on with the same company or use that experience as a stepping stone is up to the individual.

Less today. With so much work being outsourced, production lines being closed left and right, customers vanishing (ex-owners-now-homeless, victims of the credit crunch/scams, the downsized, and the South-Americans-going-home, to name a few), the chances are somewhat lower than they used to be. OTOH, for many of the cheery personnel, this highlight of their day may be an achievement. The semiliterate need jobs, too.

Just to make my point here, I was once watching the girl at cloth cutting table trying to type 9 2/3 yards into the digital contraption they used, and it took her about three minutes to find it in the conversion table, which was taped to her desk, in a 24px font. She was so happy to find the .667 that she forgot the 9. And that's far from being an exception.

One good thing about this system is that if you're intelligent and literate enough (literate in the broad sense of not just knowing how to sign your check, but knowing how things work and how are they called) you already have a competitive advantage and can get promoted quickly.

>I think that lowly ants working here in the states have a much better chance of getting further financially in life (especially without any friends or relatives in high places) than in socialist or communist countries. Otherwise, I think our immigration demand (legal and illegal) would be closer to the level of your home country, wouldn't it?

Financially yes - all the money IS here. The failure of most socialist systems wasn't that the failure of distribution of goods, it was the failure to produce wealth to distribute. Most of them were no more than a right and just distribution of poverty.

OTOH, the accessibility of higher education made up for very dynamic vertical movements in the society. My paternal grandfather was a peasant, maternal owned a bar. Pretty much anyone I know from my class was a child of a plain worker or peasant - or at least a grandchild. However, the nuveau riche's kids, those who had parents in higher places, didn't necessarily fare too well, having failed later - at the university, where the parents' influence couldn't reach, or in their career, when the parents died or retired - some took to drinking, some never finished college. Daughters of a very important man from our street took different paths - one got married to a truck driver, the other never got married and didn't go high in her career either.

IOW, one may not have been horribly rich - the modest townhouse we have here would rank as fit for a senior manager then, if not enough for a CEO - but one may have gone up or down on their own merit.

>Second, part of it is our culture which so many Europeans comment on. It's what I've seen here on the UT referred to as that 'fake public friendliness' that supposedly means nothing deep down. You see it in nurses in hospitals who present a cheerful friendly atttitude when they are so exhausted they'd like nothing more than to lay down and sleep for 12 hours.

That's called good bedside manners and being a professional. Yes, I know I was one of those Europeans who complained about fake smiles - what else you can say about the smile that flips on and off in about 4 microjiffies - but then I didn't say it was all bad. If it's not sincere, at least it's an effort to be nice, and that counts too. I don't know how my smile looks, though - who knows. So I may be guilty of the same thing, I wouldn't know.