Re:Ask HN: What's the next big thing that few people are tal...
by yunohn on Tuesday August 09, 2022 @01:33AM
(#32394499)
This just sounds to me like you haven’t read enough. It’s not that hard to understand honestly. Here are some randomly picked links:
https://www.vice.com/en/article/qj8q8m/admit-your-financial-...
https://gen.medium.com/families-like-mine-rarely-realize-the...
https://spsp.org/news-center/character-context-blog/how-and-...
Re:Ask HN: What's the next big thing that few people are tal...
by xyzzyz on Tuesday August 09, 2022 @01:57AM
(#32394644)
I clicked on the first link. Is the point here that Elon Musk is a billionaire because parents bought him a new car when he was in his twenties? If this is the example of how family wealth allows people to get ahead in life, then, well, allow me to continue to disregard it. What kind car you drive has pretty much zero impact when it comes to achieving wealth or success.
I hear a lot about the role of "family wealth", but I never actually hear about mechanism, how exactly it helps. If you're a legacy of a wealthy family, and thanks to that, get into Harvard, then sure, that's a real leg up, but it doesn't explain why some Harvard graduates become billionaires, while overwhelming majority do not. Similarly, if your family is rich enough to invest $1M in your startup, that's surely a huge advantage over regular people, but given how easy it is for non-scions to get $1M in investment funding (and it's really easy), I can scarcely believe that "family wealth" is really such a huge causal factor.