If you're holding onto the myth that one day, by applying good-ole fashioned elbow grease and American ingenuity,you'll beat the odds, you'll become one of the wealthy: that paunchy-cigar-chomping-straight-white-guy set simultaneously admired and envied by hungry junior execs everywhere, then boy do I have some assigned reading for you! You're better off playin the lottery.

By the way, if you think you're part of the upper 1% ask yourself if your yearly household income is >$350K. If not, you might be one of the 17% of Americans needing to reconsider this belief.