It's amazing how you can use the same data to argue the opposite point, just on how you frame it.
I guarantee if a the son of a middle class innkeeper with an absentee father from Greenbow, Alabama became a billionaire people would say he had an advantage because he got to experience a diverse group of people as a kid and had a loving mother who supported him. An orphan living on the streets in an impoverished town in Italy and we'd say not everyone has the opportunity to make their own way when they're only 9 years old.
Shrug.
The percentage of people with significant inherited wealth who becomes billionaires far exceeds the percentage of people with significant inherited wealth in the general population.
Thus, inheriting wealth has an enormous impact on the likelihood of becoming a billionaire in America.
Warren Buffet' father was a congressman
Larry Page's father was a professor of computer science at University
Sergey Brin's father was professor of mathematics at University and his mother worked at NASA
these are the first three I looked up and they don't look like low or middle class
But, I think middle class is more than just raw finance. Educational background of the parents is very important too. If you grow up with two professors - don't you think you'll do better than two high school dropouts? (On average)
How is it not upper class?
There are 535 Congressmen in USA, 99.99999999% of them is well... 535.
If I find the son of a Congressman that made billions your model will prove wrong
Warren Buffet is one.
Jeff Bezos
Bill Gates
Warren Buffett
Mark Zuckerberg
Larry Ellison
Larry Page
Sergey Brin
Michael Bloomberg
Steve Ballmer
Jim Walton
I'll start: Here's my list of the "self-made":
Jeff Bezos, Larry Ellison, Michael Bloomberg (although I don't know how he made partner at Bloomberg at 30). Maybe Steve Ballmer. Page and Brin are special cases; they're the children of university professors.
Is there really such a thing as self-made? I honestly don't believe so. Otherwise, I think more people would do it.
Not saying that those situations are perfectly comparable at all, just trying to make a point that "if it was so good and easy, why isn't everyone successfully doing it" isn't really a solid argument for this.
Also, if it were true that people could be "self-made", we'd see a more diverse selection of "self-made" people. Instead, we see races and genders that aren't doing anywhere near as well as other races and genders.
If you think in terms of financial upbringing, we got a lot of diversity going. US has an insane turnover in terms of wealth, with a really high number of first gen millionaires and billionaires. Also note the fact that 70% of families losing wealth just a generation or two down the road[0]. Which is imo a very good thing, as it brings more evidence and support for the "self-made" theory.
In terms of social upbringing, just look at the numbers of top-tier CEOs and founders who are children of immigrants or immigrants themselves[1].
0. https://money.com/rich-families-lose-wealth/
1. https://www.cnbc.com/2018/05/30/us-tech-companies-founded-by...