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It's certainly true that you need to be very lucky to become a billionaire - generating wealth at that level usually involves tremendous numbers of other people

It's certainly true that you need to be very lucky to become a billionaire - generating wealth at that level usually involves tremendous numbers of other people loving whatever business you have decided to create. But if you're reasonably intelligent, at least in the US, it's quite possible to become a millionaire without much luck, through decades of hard work and discipline. Examples: software engineers at large companies that stick around for decades (usually through options), doctors (at least specialists, such as cardiologists and anesthesiologists), and lawyers that go to the best schools and are able to land jobs at top-flight firms. Even tradesmen that stick to their craft, such as master electricians or plumbers, can quite reasonably expect to achieve millionaire status over the course of their lifetime assuming that they manage their money well. So yes, luck plays a huge role in the creation of enormous sums of wealth. But if you live in a country with abundant economic opportunity such as the US, there's no reason to be poor unless you have been extremely unlucky (health problems, accidents, etc have befallen you), you are unwilling to work, or you've made extremely poor life/financial decisions.

charles-salvia 10y ago
Then why is poverty concentrated geographically in inner-cities and rural areas instead of evenly spread out? Obviously location and environment affect opportunity, including the perception that breaking out of poverty is even possible to begin with.
- downandout 10y ago
  Because breaking out of poverty is a hard thing to do. It is certainly possible, beginning with a focus on achieving at a high level early in school (which can be a difficult task when dealing with life issues imposed by poverty). Doing extremely well in high school, which can lead to college, scholarships, etc. is one of the few exits on the freeway to adult poverty for impoverished children. Once that ship has sailed, they could go into trades, such as electrical and plumbing/heating. Most, won't, instead bouncing from job to job with no hope of ever improving their station in life, and will have their own children, instantly worsening their own financial situation and continuing the cycle. But none of that means it's impossible or that it requires luck to break out of (again, assuming they live in a country with abundant economic opportunity). It requires hard work, discipline, and perhaps most importantly, an understanding that the limits their parents ran into that resulted in their impoverished upbringing are not insurmountable.
  - iagreeentirely 10y ago
    I would disagree with your luck statement. I broke out of poverty. My parents were both unskilled labor, we were on assistance at least once that I can recall. Part of what allowed me to escape is luck. Yes it required that I developed early and so was ahead of my peers in education. It also required hard work to capitalize on that lead. However, what kept more than one of my cohorts from escaping was bad luck. A family member had a health issue, a legal issue, whatever. Their need to care for their family caused them to miss an opportunity (Get a job rather than go to college). Unless you're advocating living life as a sociopath and ditching people as 'dead weight', luck is absolutely part of escaping poverty.
    - downandout 10y ago
      In my original comment, I said that there's no reason to be poor, with a couple of exceptions - including bad luck. With hard work and discipline, you don't need to have especially good luck to break out of poverty, but yes, any bad luck can wreak havoc on the life of anyone in almost any socioeconomic circumstance. This is why it's still important to have social safety nets, even if the general public doesn't like the fact that these nets will save both the very unlucky and irresponsible people/those that simply don't want to contribute to society.
      - iagreeentirely 10y ago
        Luck is luck. Whether you call it bad luck that they had an adversity to overcome that I did not, or good luck that I did not have that adversity, you're still talking about fortune. In any case, whether you say it is that the parents are poor or that they are drug addicts or don't care or whatever, you're talking about things outside the control of the individual. I cannot choose the parents I was born to.
        deleted 10y ago
        [deleted]
jartelt 10y ago
You are ignoring the fact that someone born into a poor family in an inner city like has an underfunded, underachieving public school, overwhelmed and inexperienced teachers, a below average guidance counselor, no role models who have gone to college, parents who do not know anything about applying for scholarships or financial aid, a diet of fast food, and few examples of other people in similar roles who became millionaires. In a lot of cases, the best chance of success for people in these situations is to be LUCKY and win a lottery to get into a charter school. Or, to be LUCKY and have the physical tools needed to get a sports scholarship.
- mindcrime 10y ago
  an underfunded, underachieving public school, overwhelmed and inexperienced teachers, a below average guidance counselor, no role models who have gone to college, parents who do not know anything about applying for scholarships or financial aid, a diet of fast food, and few examples of other people in similar roles who became millionaires That sounds like my life except for the inner city part. Substitute "redneck-ville" though, and it's the same basic principle. And I will say that I think the idea that these things mean you need massive amounts of luck to become "successful" (depending on exactly how you define successful) is bullshit. I never had any particular amount of luck that I can identify, relative to my peers who were born in similar circumstances, and while I'm not a millionaire (but I'm still working on it), I've been what most people would call reasonably successful. In my experience, what it takes is mainly insane work ethic, an indomitable attitude, dogged determination, and relentless pursuit of your goals.
  - jartelt 10y ago
    First off, congrats on getting to where you are today. It sounds like your hard work is really paying off. I would just note that one of the points of the article is that it is difficult for a successful person to recognize the lucky events in their life. Perhaps in one of your job interviews you hit it off with the interviewer because you went to the same college or were both from "redneck-ville." Another person with equal skill and work ethic could have not gotten that job because they weren't form the same background and didn't have the rapport with the interviewer. I think you can say in that scenario one person got lucky and the other was unlucky. No one is saying it is bad to be lucky. It just helps with empathy when you take the world view that not every outcome is completely fair and logical.
fnl 10y ago
If your assumptions were true, then software engineers, medical doctors, or persons with whatever well-payed jobs there are at a given point in time should always end up on the bright side if they are hard working and disciplined. To that I can counter that I have met many hard working persons with excellent higher education (IT, medicine, engineering, science, no matter) in my life, but then bad luck struck and destroyed it all. Their kid died and they didn't overcome it. They had to flee a country in war and are now 50+ and unemployable. An extreme example a lawyer told me: An entrepreneurial woman with a great company stopped to help a person in an accident; Along comes a crazy car, crashes into all of them, and the woman looses both arms in the incident - now she's in deep dept and the company in ruins. And so forth... The opposite, good luck, is just as prevalent in middle income strata, too. Take software engineers: There are usually hundreds if not thousands of persons applying for a job. Certainly there are several in most cases that would be a match. But will you be the lucky one who got picked? Etc. The article itself also has some examples, like getting an career boosting promotion earlier than normal. Yet, in the end, all (first and second world inhabitants only, and only if you were not born to some miserable parent(s)!) striving for that job and not being struck by some bad incident might end up just fine. [As I should add: But not doing maximally great either, unless being struck by one or - more likely - quite a few really lucky incidents.] In other words, luck plays an always present role in all strata of society, not just the extremes. Only, it might not be that obvious right there, "in the middle." But whatever, the whole point of the article is about the extremes, smoothing those cases with exceptional bad or good luck, not about those in the mid ranges doing just fine...

charles-salvia 10y ago

Then why is poverty concentrated geographically in inner-cities and rural areas instead of evenly spread out? Obviously location and environment affect opportunity, including the perception that breaking out of poverty is even possible to begin with.

downandout 10y ago
Because breaking out of poverty is a hard thing to do. It is certainly possible, beginning with a focus on achieving at a high level early in school (which can be a difficult task when dealing with life issues imposed by poverty). Doing extremely well in high school, which can lead to college, scholarships, etc. is one of the few exits on the freeway to adult poverty for impoverished children. Once that ship has sailed, they could go into trades, such as electrical and plumbing/heating. Most, won't, instead bouncing from job to job with no hope of ever improving their station in life, and will have their own children, instantly worsening their own financial situation and continuing the cycle. But none of that means it's impossible or that it requires luck to break out of (again, assuming they live in a country with abundant economic opportunity). It requires hard work, discipline, and perhaps most importantly, an understanding that the limits their parents ran into that resulted in their impoverished upbringing are not insurmountable.
- iagreeentirely 10y ago
  I would disagree with your luck statement. I broke out of poverty. My parents were both unskilled labor, we were on assistance at least once that I can recall. Part of what allowed me to escape is luck. Yes it required that I developed early and so was ahead of my peers in education. It also required hard work to capitalize on that lead. However, what kept more than one of my cohorts from escaping was bad luck. A family member had a health issue, a legal issue, whatever. Their need to care for their family caused them to miss an opportunity (Get a job rather than go to college). Unless you're advocating living life as a sociopath and ditching people as 'dead weight', luck is absolutely part of escaping poverty.
  - downandout 10y ago
    In my original comment, I said that there's no reason to be poor, with a couple of exceptions - including bad luck. With hard work and discipline, you don't need to have especially good luck to break out of poverty, but yes, any bad luck can wreak havoc on the life of anyone in almost any socioeconomic circumstance. This is why it's still important to have social safety nets, even if the general public doesn't like the fact that these nets will save both the very unlucky and irresponsible people/those that simply don't want to contribute to society.
    - iagreeentirely 10y ago
      Luck is luck. Whether you call it bad luck that they had an adversity to overcome that I did not, or good luck that I did not have that adversity, you're still talking about fortune. In any case, whether you say it is that the parents are poor or that they are drug addicts or don't care or whatever, you're talking about things outside the control of the individual. I cannot choose the parents I was born to.
      - deleted 10y ago
        [deleted]

jartelt 10y ago

You are ignoring the fact that someone born into a poor family in an inner city like has an underfunded, underachieving public school, overwhelmed and inexperienced teachers, a below average guidance counselor, no role models who have gone to college, parents who do not know anything about applying for scholarships or financial aid, a diet of fast food, and few examples of other people in similar roles who became millionaires. In a lot of cases, the best chance of success for people in these situations is to be LUCKY and win a lottery to get into a charter school. Or, to be LUCKY and have the physical tools needed to get a sports scholarship.

mindcrime 10y ago
an underfunded, underachieving public school, overwhelmed and inexperienced teachers, a below average guidance counselor, no role models who have gone to college, parents who do not know anything about applying for scholarships or financial aid, a diet of fast food, and few examples of other people in similar roles who became millionaires That sounds like my life except for the inner city part. Substitute "redneck-ville" though, and it's the same basic principle. And I will say that I think the idea that these things mean you need massive amounts of luck to become "successful" (depending on exactly how you define successful) is bullshit. I never had any particular amount of luck that I can identify, relative to my peers who were born in similar circumstances, and while I'm not a millionaire (but I'm still working on it), I've been what most people would call reasonably successful. In my experience, what it takes is mainly insane work ethic, an indomitable attitude, dogged determination, and relentless pursuit of your goals.
- jartelt 10y ago
  First off, congrats on getting to where you are today. It sounds like your hard work is really paying off. I would just note that one of the points of the article is that it is difficult for a successful person to recognize the lucky events in their life. Perhaps in one of your job interviews you hit it off with the interviewer because you went to the same college or were both from "redneck-ville." Another person with equal skill and work ethic could have not gotten that job because they weren't form the same background and didn't have the rapport with the interviewer. I think you can say in that scenario one person got lucky and the other was unlucky. No one is saying it is bad to be lucky. It just helps with empathy when you take the world view that not every outcome is completely fair and logical.

fnl 10y ago

If your assumptions were true, then software engineers, medical doctors, or persons with whatever well-payed jobs there are at a given point in time should always end up on the bright side if they are hard working and disciplined. To that I can counter that I have met many hard working persons with excellent higher education (IT, medicine, engineering, science, no matter) in my life, but then bad luck struck and destroyed it all. Their kid died and they didn't overcome it. They had to flee a country in war and are now 50+ and unemployable. An extreme example a lawyer told me: An entrepreneurial woman with a great company stopped to help a person in an accident; Along comes a crazy car, crashes into all of them, and the woman looses both arms in the incident - now she's in deep dept and the company in ruins. And so forth... The opposite, good luck, is just as prevalent in middle income strata, too. Take software engineers: There are usually hundreds if not thousands of persons applying for a job. Certainly there are several in most cases that would be a match. But will you be the lucky one who got picked? Etc. The article itself also has some examples, like getting an career boosting promotion earlier than normal. Yet, in the end, all (first and second world inhabitants only, and only if you were not born to some miserable parent(s)!) striving for that job and not being struck by some bad incident might end up just fine. [As I should add: But not doing maximally great either, unless being struck by one or - more likely - quite a few really lucky incidents.] In other words, luck plays an always present role in all strata of society, not just the extremes. Only, it might not be that obvious right there, "in the middle." But whatever, the whole point of the article is about the extremes, smoothing those cases with exceptional bad or good luck, not about those in the mid ranges doing just fine...