Anyone is a lofty standard. Some is true, but you don't hear about the super smart guy who worked really hard but for some reason or another luck didn't go his way and then he had no safety net to fall on. I can take risks because although my parents aren't leaving me a trust fund, if shit REALLY hit the fan, I could always move in with them instead of starving in the streets. If you have nobody to lean on, risks seem a lot bigger when you have further to fall.

I actually know a lot of people who did that. They all got by. America at least is a very easy place if you're smart and hard working. That is not true in many parts of the world unfortunately.

A lot of people is still not anyone. I know several people on the other side of the coin who were incredibly smart and ambitious and resourceful and failed, with no one to fall back on, and now have some serious problems in their life. There is no doubt these guys would have bounced back a lot more easily if they had a trust fund to lean on.

I don't think anyone would claim that a trust fund is a disadvantage. But if the people you know are really smart, ambitious, and resourceful, then give them time. They're still just in process.

It might also be a cultural thing. American society is very ambitious, and the environment BG grew up in appears to be on the extreme end of it.

The intelligence factor is harder to measure, but I'm not sure if business savvy and entrepreneurial drive are things you're born with, or traits you pick up as you grow.

All that aside, there are stories where the down and out Joe bootstraps himself to riches through hard work/ambition/etc. so it's hard to say what is causing what. In fact I feel that I'm very ambitious/entrepreneurial, even though my parents were an engineer and chemist for a very large corporation.

Your assumption here is that Bill Gates was born with "off-the-charts intelligence, business savvy and entrepreneurial drive" and nothing about his upbringing affected this in anyway. I think even the strongest genetic determinist would have to concede that's not true, which throws doubt on him even having these qualities if he'd been born and raised elsewhere (ghetto, communist state, refugee camp etc.)