Meanwhile, I was the child of privilege who had the benefit of a loving two parent home that paid for my education to UF and gave me a great start loaning me money to buy my first house. So after 20 years together she and I have basically the same title at the same company. She is the rare example of a true self made person. Everything she has comes from herself aside from the minor safety net that she received as a child. Of which she has repaid a hundred time over in taxes as an adult. Makes you wonder how many more could make it if we just spent a little more helping out those that are less fortunate. We need to do a better job of as a nation identifying where we can make a lifelong change by just giving a little bit of money on the short term.==============================

The way I've seen it used, it's meant to diminish and dismiss anyone whose family has "done it right" over the course of many years. Years ago, that was just the way families were supposed to work and was basically "normal". You also had people who were brought up in less fortunate circumstances, some of whom (like it sounds like your wife did) worked hard to improve themselves, some of them didn't. Those who worked hard managed to rise into better circumstances for their kids (my parents, for one, me for another). I did not, however, see any of them pointing to those more fortunate and saying "you only got there because you had a huge advantage", which is what I see as the goal of the "privilege" concept. No one starts at the top from way back when, you got there and stayed there because someone in the past did the work to get there.

As the bottom drops even further, I fear more and more people will embrace "privilege" as an excuse not to do their best and rely less on themselves to improve their situation and more on the government to give them what they feel they deserve just by being alive (a fast-growing list IMO).