Re:Underrated predictor of success: willingness to be low-st...
by stuntkite on Friday October 23, 2020 @05:01PM
(#24874126)
I think the "86% of billionaires" thing can be attributed to wealth concentration to income gap. If you want to be a billionaire, it helps if your family had many millions. The extraction of the ultra wealthy that has happened in the last 40 years is pretty incredible. I'm unsure that there are any billionaires that started out leaving home as an emancipated minor with no job and no money an an early life of untreated trauma resulting in complex PTSD.
Also I'd love to see a deeper analysis of your "86% of billionaires" comment. Usually what happens is we discover that "self-made" millionaires grew up in quite affluent circumstances, perhaps not with millionaire parents, but with parents who earned a sufficient income to themselves retire as millionaires. That is to say, they aren't "self-made". It isn't meaningful to compare their accumulation of wealth to the struggles of those born in less favorable circumstances.
There are no "self-made" billionaires. Or very, very few (WhatsApp founder Jan Koum is literally the only one I can think of who comes close). Every single high-profile billionaire today--Gates, Buffet, Zuckerberg, Bezos, Musk, etc.--came from a family with substantial financial means and social connections.