After Mike had received his degree from the University of New Mexico, the family moved to Houston, Texas, so that he could begin working as an engineer for Exxon.[22] Jeff Bezos attended River Oaks Elementary School in Houston from fourth to sixth grade.[23] Bezos' maternal grandfather was Lawrence Preston Gise, a regional director of the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) in Albuquerque.[24] Gise retired early to his family's ranch near Cotulla, Texas, where Bezos would spend many summers in his youth.[25]
[...] He accepted an estimated $300,000 from his parents and invested in Amazon.[47][51][52] He warned many early investors that there was a 70% chance that Amazon would fail or go bankrupt.
The one thing many CEOs have in common is early access to resources and tinkering opportunities which aren't available to most of the population.
Which is the exact opposite of your point.
Bezos is a ridiculous example to use anyway, as he obviously made bank working in finance before he took risks on Amazon such that he was never risking being homeless.
Just the simple fact that your parents own a home where you are welcome to live can be enough for you to be able to take risks. And Zuckerberg and Gates and others were not middle class, they were at least upper middle and I would bet their parents (dentists and prominent lawyers) were already above 90th percentile in wealth.
I love when people tell me examples of extremely poor people taking risks and hitting it big, and at the same time lament how people irresponsibly have children and debt they could not handle. Celebrate them when the gamble pays off, but shit on them when it does not.
How often does this happen? Who says those two things simultaneously?
But many, especially the older generations, also like to complain about people not striking it out on their own as a causal factor for why they remain poor.
It is a popular trope in culture too. It makes people feel good about themselves if they can forget about the shoulders they stood on, and for those who do not have shoulders to stand on, it gives them hope.
> people tell me examples of extremely poor people taking risks and hitting it big, and at the same time lament how people irresponsibly have children and debt they could not handle
Is having children a risk that could mean one hits it big? And it's definitely also possible (if not normal) for debt to come from lifestyle overspending rather than risking things to make it big. I just don't see the logical connection, although I can see there's an emotional one there.
Also pretending like the barrier of entry into technology _hasn't_ gone up is ignoring the material conditions people face now.
If you think it was easier when you had to study at or work for a wealthy university, and also everything had to be done painstaking by punched card instead of today's instant feedback on a free, beautiful tutorial website, then I'm not sure what to tell you.
At the time of Bezos' birth, his mother was a 17-year-old high school student and his father was 19 years old.[18] After completing high school despite challenging conditions, Jacklyn attended night school while bringing Bezos along as a baby.[19] After his parents divorced, his mother married Cuban immigrant Miguel "Mike" Bezos in April 1968.[20] Shortly after the wedding, Mike adopted four-year-old Bezos, whose surname was then legally changed from Jorgensen to Bezos.[21] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeff_Bezos
We can all pick examples to fit our narratives