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A comment on The labor share of income in the US is at its lowest post-war level. Parent comment

Re:The labor share of income in the US is at its lowest post... by bluefirebrand on Tuesday June 30, 2026 @03:16PM (#48737864)
Something I've seen a lot is claims about individuals being self made, climbing the ladder from grit and ingenuity and such. Look at Bezos, he's an example of climbing the ladder! Or Zuckerberg!

And when you dig a bit more, you kinda find out this isn't really true?

I mean look at this AI summary of asking "Was Jeff Bezos born into wealth"

> Jeff Bezos was not born into wealth; his mother was a 17-year-old student and his adoptive father was an impoverished Cuban refugee who arrived in the U.S. alone at age 16. However, his maternal grandfather owned a large Texas ranch and later provided roughly $250,000 to help fund the launch of Amazon

Oh so his parents weren't wealthy only his grandparents. That's totally different

You know what my Grandpa gave me? A used car worth about 3 grand. Still amazing, I'm still very grateful to him! But the comparison here is absolutely not in the same league!

And I'm still a fortunate one, because many people get much less than a car from their families

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Re:The labor share of income in the US is at its lowest post... by WarmWash on Tuesday June 30, 2026 @03:58PM (#48738411)
The question is how many people get $250k from their family and lose it all.

Everyone's life is a mix of skill and luck, so to discredit skill, you would need to quantify the luck. An easy example is a lottery winner, a hard example is a Bezos. Any investor with the foresight to see what Bezos could do with grans money, would jump past her in line and give him triple.

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Re:The labor share of income in the US is at its lowest post... by bluefirebrand on Tuesday June 30, 2026 @06:49PM (#48740267)
> The question is how many people get $250k from their family and lose it all

I don't think that really matters? The fact that they even had that shot at all is such an incredible opportunity above people whose family simply cannot afford to even try

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Re:The labor share of income in the US is at its lowest post... by WarmWash on Wednesday July 01, 2026 @09:23AM (#48746346)
But if you have the skill to turn $250k into much more money, anyone with $250k and that knowledge will give it to you.

There are far far more stories of investors giving nascent broke startups money than families.

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Re:The labor share of income in the US is at its lowest post... by grumpy_coder on Tuesday June 30, 2026 @07:37PM (#48740647)
You have to have access to far more than $250k to be willing to blow that creating a startup. I may give my kids $250k for a house to live in. I do not have enough for them to yolo it on a dot com startup.
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