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@Aesculapius It's funny, tragic, and sad that modern Republicans started using that phrase unironically. It actually means the opposite of what they think it does, it's clearly impossible to do:

Back in the 1800s, the expression “pull oneself up by the bootstraps” meant the opposite of what it does now. Then it was used mockingly to describe an impossible act.
An 1834 publication ridiculed a claim to have built a perpetual-motion machine by saying that the inventor might next heave himself over a river “by the straps of his boots.” An 1840 citation scoffs that something is “as gross an absurdity as he who attempts to raise himself over a fence by the straps of his boots.” source

people have a really hard time believing that this exists since they can find anecdotal examples to the contrary

"I once met someone who rolled a 12 with 2 dice. Why did those other people not choose to roll better than a 7 on average? Must be because of bad decisions."

I get what you’re saying, but this is what they call anecdotal evidence. Plus, the article doesn’t claim that a person’s choices can not affect their financial outcome, it says that [edit: “biased decision-making”] alone do not account for the amount of income inequality prominent in the countries studied.

What you’re saying may be true, but if a terrible fate befell one of you, you would both have the assets to weather it. However, someone in the lower income bracket would not, no matter what choices they made, for reasons many times beyond their control.