Inquiring bloggers want to know...

In "[T]he lyf so short, the craft so long to lerne", the blogger at Either End of the Curve asks why people want to learn stuff in a hurry, if it takes years to hone skills to expert level? An excerpt (ellipsis in original):

One of the less technical things upon which he [the father of one of her friends] liked to expound was ... how long it takes for those starting out in highly technical fields to truly start contributing anything of real significance. I don't remember the exact number of years that he cited, but it was definitely in line with what Norvig [Peter Norvig, director of research at Google] is saying. My rocket scientist friend, with a great deal of affection and tolerance, would recount stories of the way in which "new" employees with advanced degrees and eight years, or whatever, of professional experience under their belts were still "beginners," with a long way to go. Knowledge, to his mind, was something that leaks and creeps and gradually grows, as opposed to being a package that can be ripped open with abandon, as on Christmas morn.

In American exceptionalism, Bookworm of Bookworm Room asks for thoughts on why some groups in America have tended to move up and out of tenements in one generation, while other families in other times and places seem to get stuck in poverty generation after generation:

Have any of you ever been to the Lower East Side Tenement Museum in New York? It is, in my opinion, the best museum New York has to offer. All the other museums -- the Met, the Museum of Natural History, MOMA, etc. -- are sort of generic. That is, they're great museums, but you can find their like in every major world city. The Tenement museum, though, is unique and wonderful. It's a building in the Lower East Side that was built in 1867 and that was continuously inhabited through the early 1930s. It was then sealed up, where it remained as an unlikely time capsule to be explored decades later.

[snip]

One of the things that the tenement museum did, using census information, was to trace what happened to those immigrants and their descendents. As I understand it, almost without exception, the tenement was a one generation thing, with the families moving further and further into success and the suburbs.

So my question or rather, my series of questions: What was it about America that enabled people to pass through this Hell in a single generation? Was it that time in history? Was it America itself? Was it that particular group of immigrants? As you think about it, think about the current problems in Europe, such as the French riots or the German honor killings, which seem to occur in housing complexes where immigrants have lived in isolation for generations. Also, think about the fact that, despite the Great Society, many African-Americans have remained mired in poverty and have also spent generations living in depressing, violent squalor (New Orleans is a good example). Last, if you have information on the subjects, you might bring to the table thoughts about today's immigrants (Hispanic, East Asian, etc.).

I have my own ideas about the answers to my questions, but I'm much more interested in hearing what others have to say...

The ball's in your court...