My belief is that not everyone has the same opportunities for a variety of reasons and even if something might work for me it might very well be impossible for others.

I also believe that it is our duty as society to make sure everyone can have a decent life even when not granted the same privileges others get for free.

Assuming everyone can put in the hard work and make it, you imply that everyone has or can learn "quickly" a markeatable skill, including the business acumen, the available free time and the mental/physical health required to succeed.

But the real issue is that even if everyone was able to try to get rich starting on an equally levelled field, our economic system can't allow everyone to succeed. We need poorer people to do employed jobs in order for their value produced in "excess" to be sent to shareholders and CEOs.

It just seems madness to me to have this global competition where the poor race against each other in order to be allowed to become one of the rich. We can do way better than this.

Best way to make raise employee's wages: competition between employers. For that we need more employers. For that we need more startups. For that we need more founders and entrepreneurs.

Competition is great, but at all levels.

Wealth creation is not zero-sum. Read PG's essay: http://paulgraham.com/wealth.html

Also some investment books: "A Random Walk Down Wall Street" "Rich Dad Poor Dad" "The Millionaire Next Door" https://www.bogleheads.org/wiki/Bogleheads%C2%AE_investment_...

Have fun learning!