But it is well established that parents’ wealth is an extremely good predictor of children’s wealth (see e.g. [1]). And I don’t think OP is matte_black is denying the role of intelligence. They’re merely noting that poverty, in itself, doesn’t necessarily correlate with ingenuity.
[1] https://paperpile.com/app/p/5f560e7d-74f8-0316-879a-70c0cf60...
But it’s not the relative importance of one thing vs the other which is most important.
What is most important in the context of this conversation, imho, is the case for the profound negative effects of poverty, United-States style, on an individuals growth and the (sometimes insurmountable) challenges it creates for that person.
And the reason that this matters is that poverty in a country such as the U.S. (and also many, if not most other countries) is the result of a series of political choices by people (social policy, etc) over time.
In over words, it’s a phenomenon which is, if not created entirely by, is definitely affected (increased or decreases) by human behavior.
Meaning it’s something we can change.
So just because parent's wealth predicts children's wealth doesn't in any way make it impossible that intelligence predicts wealth too or that they'd necessarily be in conflict.