If you dream of one day pulling yourself up by your bootstraps to become the next Bill Gates, there are some places in America where it's somewhat easier to do that than others, a new study reveals. Cities in the South and the Rust Belt have extremely low levels of economic mobility -- a wonky term that essentially measures one's ability to go from being poor to rich -- according to a study from economists at Harvard University and the University of California-Berkeley. To put that into more concrete terms: Someone born in the bottom fifth of the income ladder in Atlanta, Georgia, where economic mobility is low, has a 4.5 percent chance of reaching the top fifth of the income ladder, the study found. Meanwhile in Washington, D.C., a city with high economic mobility, the chance of moving up the income ladder is about 11 percent. In the map below, red indicates low economic mobility while pale yellow represents places with higher economic mobility: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/01/23/american-dream-dead_n_4651337.html
Ingredients for "the american dream" 1 silver digging wife 2 spoiled kids 5 credit cards per adult A job you hate 10x more debt than savings A house in the burbs financed by a mortgage Obesity and other health problems This is how your average american citizen lives "the dream."