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Culture War Roundup for the week of April 13, 2026

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Also, by my impression going up the corporate ladder of some BigCorp has a much better floor AND a better ceiling unless you're exceptionally confident in yourself. But it probably depends highly on the field.

Absolutely depends on field. The vast majority of Germans (and basically all other Euros) cannot independently reach real wealth by being wagies. There are exceptions - if you have the education (enough credentials in the correct field) to really go up the corpo ladder or to become an expert at the local branch of a US company/startup, you don't need to risk anything - but the overwhelming majority of people simply do not have a route to break into a 6 figure salary while employed. The distribution of salaries is just to narrow, and there's almost no long tail in Europe (things look orders of magnitude more dire if you aim above 200k: less than 1% of adults in Germany earn more than 200k EUR, and that number includes all sources of income - so there's a lot of business owners, partners and capital income recipients in that block).

But if you own a business? There's no cultural monetary limits. No education/credential requirements. "Just" the soft skills, the drive and some luck (which you need to climb the cropo ladder as well) can get into the top few percentile points of income/wealth. And sure, you need to build momentum. You need to pick a field that allows for commerce (because selling things scales much better than selling labor) and that allows you an easy path to exploit the labor of the people you hire. But both come practically built-in with many blue collar careers: many of the people in those field do not want (or cannot) directly compete with you, they want to be hired; and most of your customers don't only need to buy labor, they also need physical products (which you can sell them with good - and often obscene - margins).