11 ms·

How to get rich in America

94 points by known 10y ago

minikites 10y ago
> That suggests that the simplest way to become extremely rich is by being born to the right parents. The second-easiest way is to find a rich spouse. Articles showing just how unattainable wealth is in the USA always remind me of this quote which seems to be the most concise summary of why many poor and middle class people vote against their own economic interests: > Socialism never took root in America because the poor see themselves not as an exploited proletariat but as temporarily embarrassed millionaires.
- ryandrake 10y ago
  It's an old article but at the time 39% of Americans thought they either were or one day will be among the top 1% [1]. 1: http://www.nytimes.com/2003/01/12/opinion/the-triumph-of-hope-over-self-interest.html http://www.nytimes.com/2003/01/12/opinion/the-triumph-of-hop...
- jasonlfunk 10y ago
  The article isn't saying that wealth is unattainable, just that the wealth of the 1% is unattainable. A reasonable amount of wealth (middle/upper-middle class) is attainable. As other people have commented, most people don't care even to be in the 1%.
TeeWEE 10y ago
Basically having Rich parents makes it easier to become rich. This is even true in the Netherlands. I see children buying houses with parents money and subrenting it to make a profit. I just cant do this, i don't have the capital
- LeonM 10y ago
  I second this. Not having parents who spend their life accumulating wealth (read: bought a house which increased an order of magnitude in value over the last 20 years) makes it very hard to even afford a house for your own use, let alone buying one to rent out. With the wealth gap growing ever larger, it becomes increasingly hard to 'break out' of the (lower) middle class.
  - breser 10y ago
    Where the heck are you living that your house's value increased by an order of magnitude over 20 years. I live in one of the hottest real estate markets in the country, I bought in 1999 and my house is just barely under doubling in value. If not for the mess of 2008 it might have been worth more, since it was about where it is now before that crash. But I can't think of any place where people have seen an order of magnitude increase in 20 years. Over a longer period (essentially a lifetime) I'm sure that's a possibility. So I suspect you've simply chosen your time period poorly.
  - tiatia 10y ago
    With asses price inflation, depressed wages, insane taxes and and overaged population it is very hard in the EU. Only few make it. By plain luck or maybe by ability. But you can leave. Best decision I ever made.
    - jononor 10y ago
      Where did you go?
      - tiatia 10y ago
        I was born in the EU, got my PhD in the US and finally hard to start as an illegal immigrant in China and worked my way up. This being said, there are opportunities everywhere. China. Angola. Colombia. Even Ethiopia. There are opportunities out there for the people who are willing to try or who are forced to try. Places, where there is still some growth, some opportunity and the government does not strangle you. The best incentive may be if there is something that you like. Be it the weather, culture, language, women. Something that touches you. I saw too many people fail in China. This were the people who wanted to eat every day McDonnalds or Subway instead of Chinese food and called the Chinese "savages". Immerse yourself in that culture. Become that culture. Or how the Chinese say: What you can't avoid, welcome!
    - patrickaljord 10y ago
      Same here, left to Peru and worked remotely, saved a bunch. Even if you have no coding skills, you can save up to 10 or 20k euro and open a bar in Peru or any other developing countries, I knew people who did this in Peru and were doing great. Social ladder is dead in the EU, time to move elsewhere folks, don't expect anything to change. A European/US passport and a few saving is one of the biggest and most unknown privilege Westerners have. It doesn't help that people are taught to expect help from the government instead of improving their lives by themselves.
- jamesrcole 10y ago
  Basically having Rich parents makes it easier to become rich. This is even true in the Netherlands. I imagine this is true everywhere. The only variance I can imagine is in how much easier it makes it.
sagivo 10y ago
TL;DR - have a rich family or marry a rich person. if neither work - go to harvard and hope
saycheese 10y ago
Once was speaker before a few hundred recent grads and asked if they wanted to be a billionaire. Only a few raised there hands. My theory is most people want more stuff, few really want to be billionaires, or even just part of the 1%.
- croon 10y ago
  > My theory is most people want more stuff, few really want more enough money to be a billionaire, or even just part of the 1%. Or it's unreasonable to expect to be able to, and few people dream about stuff they know can never happen. To avoid disappointment.
  - jhbadger 10y ago
    Or they know that even if they could they would have to step on a lot of people's toes and compromise many of their own principles to do it. That's kind of the problem of rising in any hierarchy -- you basically have to become the sort of person you'd likely dislike to do it.
- Inconel 10y ago
  I don't really want more stuff, and I could comfortably live off of ~$20k per year here in LA, but I would love to be a billionaire. On second thought, I do actually want more stuff too, I'd love to have my own welding/machining workshop.
  - jacquesm 10y ago
    > I'd love to have my own welding/machining workshop. Given your username that's redundant :) Being a billionaire also has downsides, it will be much harder to tell people that genuinely like you from people that are just trying to get into your good graces because they are after your money.
    - Inconel 10y ago
      >Given your username that's redundant :) Indeed, there are so many projects I want to work on outside of my real job. I'm sure it would have many downsides as well, although if I could attain a high level of wealth and remain relatively anonymous it could be the best of both worlds. I do think fame would be very hard to deal with, especially for someone with my personality.
HugoDaniel 10y ago
By America they mean the country "USA". Not Brazil or Mexico or any other part of America. Given the salary inequality between the USA and most of the other countries in America it is easy to automatically imply that you only need to be in the USA to get rich in America.
- juanito 10y ago
  I know it's very confusing to a lot of people, but USA stands for United States of America. It's also the only country in the world that has America in its name.
  - GFischer 10y ago
    Ironically it's not the only United States in America (but it is the only one with America in the name I believe) Mexico is the United States of Mexico, there also were United States of Colombia, United States of Venezuela (now renamed to simply Venezuela), etc... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mexico https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mexico (Wikipedia doesn't show the official name in the title) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_of_Colombia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_of_Colombia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_of_Venezuela https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_of_Venezuela
- vthallam 10y ago
  I know America is a continent and all that, but more often than not people refer America to USA.
  - GFischer 10y ago
    Only in the U.S./English. If you refer to "America" in Spanish it's assumed you're referring to the continent, the state is commonly referred to as the United States or the United States of America. We actually call ourselves Americans here in Uruguay. https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uso_de_la_palabra_americano https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uso_de_la_palabra_americano "En el uso tradicional a los naturales de América como continente. En un segundo término, a los ciudadanos de Estados Unidos de América, uso derivado de la influencia lingüística inglesa."
dibstern 10y ago
As though a huge number of poor immigrants haven't come to the US and succeeded massively, after coming from nothing? Is this person serious?
- aninhumer 10y ago
  I'm sure many immigrants have a much better quality of life than they did before moving to the US, but very few of them actually become rich.
- otalp 10y ago
  A huge number certainly haven't succeeded massively. A few have. Also a lot of legal migrants already come from (relatively) rich families since US migration can be expensive and favours the educated.
Frogolocalypse 10y ago
It's probably no surprise that the same people that think hard work is what leads to success are the same people that don't understand what the wealth distribution actually looks like in america. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Wealth_Inequality_in_America_by_politizane.webm https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Wealth_Inequality_in_Amer...
- Noughmad 10y ago
  The actual distribution looks exactly like the 80/20 rule. So even though that may not be ideal, it is definitely not shocking or unexpected.
  - Frogolocalypse 10y ago
    No. It doesn't. More like a 60/1 rule. Or a 40/0.1 rule.
  - flexie 10y ago
    It's far from the 80/20 rule. The richest 1% has 40% of the wealth. The poorest 80% has 7 percent of wealth.
    - Noughmad 10y ago
      The 80/20 rule also says that 20% of the top 20% has 80% of the 80% of the total wealth. If you apply it three times, you get (0.2)^3 = 0.8% of the population has (0.8)^3 = 0.51% of the wealth. Which is even worse than what you see in the graph. Also, your 7% number is wrong, from the graph it seems the poorest 80% has about 16%, which is less than the one predicted by 80/20, but not by much. Again, I am not saying this is fair. The Pareto principle doesn't say this is healthy for a society, only that it is common.
- homakov 10y ago
  Hard work is only option. "having rich parents" is a personal condition... you cannot choose condition, universe does not work like that - and every second we discuss income inequality is a wasted second. Thus we end up with hard work option
homakov 10y ago
Blah blah college. Degree has nothing to do with getting rich
- pg314 10y ago
  From the article: Few engineers, nurses or pharmacists make it to the top 1%, which is dominated by bankers and other financiers. Do you think the statement in the article is wrong? Based on what? Do you think a college degree is irrelevant to become a banker or other financier?
  - homakov 10y ago
    Get rich != become a banker. The article would be accurate if it said "how to become a banker"
    - pg314 10y ago
      > Get rich != become a banker. The article doesn't say that. The passage I quoted doesn't say that either.
  - kgwgk 10y ago
    Don't engineers, nurses and pharmacists have degrees?
princetontiger 10y ago
This article is about employers hiring Ivy League graduates. Why is this news? The phenomenon is just as acute in SV as it is on Wall Street. The Tier 1 schools in the US are the Ivy League, MIT, and Stanford. Getting into these great schools starts by being incredibly precious in elementary school and middle school, and really accelerating the positive energy and focus in high school.
adriand 10y ago
Radiolab recently featured (http://www.radiolab.org/story/radiolab-presents-media-busted-americas-poverty-myths/ http://www.radiolab.org/story/radiolab-presents-media-busted...) some content from another podcast series called "Busted: America’s Poverty Myths", that examines various myths about the poor - and by extension, the rich - in the US. It was fascinating. One thing that was discussed is the degree of upward economic mobility in the USA. IIRC, they measure this by the likelihood that someone who is born into a family that is in the bottom 20% of earners enters the top 20% of earners in their lifetime. In other words, what is the statistical basis for the belief that in America, anyone can go from "rags to riches"? It turns out that in the US, the percentage of people who achieve this feat is, on average, about 7%. In Canada, it's about 13.5%. Another myth busted. Conclusion: if you want to get rich in the Americas - or at least, well-off in the Americas - come immigrate to Canada. Especially if you're reading this comment, since you likely have the kind of education and experience that makes immigrating here a breeze. Sure, it's cold here in the winter, but you'll make enough cash that you can spend a chunk of the winter in Mexico!
- auxym 10y ago
  People reading this on HN are probably already in the top 20% of earners, or close enough. As such, they are likely better off in the US. Edit: actually, based off a quick Google search, it seems that if you earn 150k, you are in fact in the top 5%
  - imaginenore 10y ago
    Which I wouldn't consider rich. Moderately wealthy, but not enough to even buy a 2br in SF or Manhattan.
    - jononor 10y ago
      Richer than 95% of people in your country is not rich?
      - dsacco 10y ago
aabajian 10y ago
>>"Between 1999 and 2004, just 2% of Princetonians came from the families in the lowest 20% of earnings, while 3.2% came from families in the top 0.1%" These kinds of statistics are appalling to me. I wonder if they continue along the income percentiles (e.g. top 5% has a greater chance than lower 30%, or so). My parents are as middle-class as it comes, one is a nurse and the other is a probation officer. Their combined income is about $150,000. The top 0.1% make > $1.5 million per year. How can your parent's income have such a dramatic effect on your access to college? Is it not enough applicants? Is it lower performance on AP exams? Is it the inability to pay tuition? I may be a bit bitter as I'm set to graduate med school with $250,000 in debt. It's hard for me to fathom having parents who could pay my tuition four times over every year.
- lmm 10y ago
  If your family income is $150,000 that puts you well above the average - you're probably in the top, what, 5%?
- douche 10y ago
  If your parents made less money, all other things being equal, you'd be in better shape. $150k just gets you out of the income bracket that gets heavy financial aid from the endowments at top-tier schools, and so you, or someone, has to pay nearly full-price. In comparison, my teacher and mechanic parents made slightly under 100k, underneath the line where financial aid kicked in heavily enough to be competitive with my local state university, and so I graduated with just the federal Perkins and Stafford loans I had to take out, to the tune of around 20k in debt.
scep43198u 10y ago
But this just assumes that everyone is striving to get into 0.1% equally, where it might make more sense assuming that someone who goes to Wall Street wants to get rich more than a nurse. It's like saying it's a lot "easier" being in top physical shape if you exercise at top sport facilities in the country, and/or already come from a family of athletes. Both of which are already signals you might be trying very hard in the first place. Coming from rich families might also mean being rich and making money is more socially valued. And rich families don't posses only money and connections which makes it easier, they probably also have good knowledge of how to make money and where money can be made compared to working class families. So before jumping to any conclusions on how easy it is and why it is easier exactly, stuff like that needs to be thought through a bit.
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saycheese 10y ago
Here's a quick lookup for US annual household income ranks/percentile based on US Census Bureau data: http://money.cnn.com/calculator/pf/income-rank/ http://money.cnn.com/calculator/pf/income-rank/ As of 2014, to be in the top 1% of income earners by household, you needed to make roughly $420,000 a year.
dgrealy 10y ago
Is entrepreneurism dead, or something? On HN of all places it isn't even mentioned in the comments? I think so many of the entrepreneurial doers left HN or stopped participating in discussions long ago.
- akhilcacharya 10y ago
  Getting "rich" from entrepreneurship isn't very practical in most cases IMO. From Dan Luu - http://danluu.com/startup-tradeoffs/ http://danluu.com/startup-tradeoffs/
  - dgrealy 10y ago
    ... that is a link about equity tradeoffs as an employee. You've demonstrated not even knowing the definition of the word! Incredible really.
    - akhilcacharya 10y ago
      In terms of risk founders take on more than startup employees take on more than bigcorp employees too. The tradeoffs for the founders are even worse. http://startupclass.samaltman.com/courses/lec01/#annotations:4119881 http://startupclass.samaltman.com/courses/lec01/#annotations...
      - dgrealy 10y ago
        Entrepreneurism is still very much alive. Down but not out. However for this board, talk of it is decimated. To the point where the only mention of it is in this thread, where I am speaking to one person, who needed to be reminded what it even means.
kamaal 10y ago
Came to work in the US. Have moved back to my home country. But would love to come to US again(A great country, no doubt). A few things that I have noticed. 1. It can be really quite hard to get rich(like crazy rich) as a programmer unless you have a very generous stock grant package. When I mean generous, I mean like really in the upper order of 6 figures. Given tax is going to eat a good bunch of it. 2. Taxes will eat a lot of your salary and bonus. So any dream of making it big out of saving up monthly salary is absurd to a large extent. 3. What makes 2. even more so true is at some point in time you have to buy a home, and take some responsibilities with regards to kids and family. Your savings cache will only decrease. If you are in the Bay area, rents will eat your ice cream. Buying a home is in the order of >=$1 million. Kids can be expensive if you want them to have a good future. If you want to buy a home, you will lose half your life to monthly payments. Plus comes the regular fear of defaulting on payments in phases of financial crises and job losses. And also be prepared for routine house maintenance expenses and property taxes. Overall life is hard for immigrants. But I can imagine it would be the same for US citizens who come from poverty. Education would come at a thick debt on top of which you have to build the above points I mentioned. Life if pretty much paycheck to the next. Paying monthly installment for car, bills, mortgage etc. Somethings that I like about the US:- Social security, infrastructure, uniform quality of education, merit and overall values on which the country is built. Overall there is better appreciation for merit and quality than most countries. If you are in the US you have already made it big by many a definition. You just have to go farther.
- klibertp 10y ago
  > Somethings that I like about the US:- Social security, ?!? That's literally against everything I ever read about USA (living in EU, never been to USA).
  - kamaal 10y ago
    Depends on where you come from. I come from India, here we have 0 social security. Any upgrade from 0 is good.
    - 10y ago
f055 10y ago
One thing often omitted, or taken for granted, in the "rich parents" discussion is the curious question of "How did the parents get rich?" Did they have rich parents too? Or did they actually started from very low and got clever/lucky/hardworking. If you think of it this way, having rich parents may not be a magic privilege, a "silver spoon", but a consequence of their effort and sacrifice. Their children do not have to bear the same sacrifice. But you, whose parents weren't that clever/lucky/hardworking, you need to bear the sacrifice - maybe even not to get rich, but give enough of a good start for your children to get rich, and you grandchildren to be called privileged.
- washadjeffmad 10y ago
  Sacrifice implies you lose something with nothing gained. These people generated wealth and got posterity and legacy. They bought that with their work, volitionally, and bore the responsibility of the dedication required to keep it. You aren't sacrificing your money to buy yourself lunch, providing for your kids isn't a sacrifice, and you aren't sacrificing by working more hours to afford that big house and nice car you have. It's just hard sometimes, but it's all part of the bargain.
  - restalis 10y ago
    "Sacrifice implies you lose something with nothing gained." Not true. That is just pure loss. According to its definition¹, "sacrifice" means either "to surrender or give up, or permit injury or disadvantage to, for the sake of something else" or "to dispose of (goods, property, etc.) regardless of profit". Parents working hard in order to provide for their kids may involve something from both of the meanings. "you aren't sacrificing by working more hours to afford that big house and nice car you have" It depends on how you look at it, and working more hours for a nice house and car can be both a transaction and a sacrifice. If you consider the leisure time you have to give up (assuming that you don't particularly enjoy your work) then it's a sacrifice. If you consider the time and energy involved in the paid work then it's just a transaction. ¹ http://www.dictionary.com/browse/sacrifice http://www.dictionary.com/browse/sacrifice
  - f055 10y ago
myf01d 10y ago
It should have been "how to get rich". However, at least in America nepotism plays a lower role in many professions compared to many other countries because competition is much rougher.
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akhilcacharya 10y ago
So what do we do if we don't go to Princeton? Or even UIUC?

94 points by known 10y ago

> That suggests that the simplest way to become extremely rich is by being born to the right parents. The second-easiest way is to find a rich spouse. Articles showing just how unattainable wealth is in the USA always remind me of this quote which seems to be the most concise summary of why many poor and middle class people vote against their own economic interests: > Socialism never took root in America because the poor see themselves not as an exploited proletariat but as temporarily embarrassed millionaires.

ryandrake 10y ago
It's an old article but at the time 39% of Americans thought they either were or one day will be among the top 1% [1]. 1: http://www.nytimes.com/2003/01/12/opinion/the-triumph-of-hope-over-self-interest.html http://www.nytimes.com/2003/01/12/opinion/the-triumph-of-hop...
jasonlfunk 10y ago
The article isn't saying that wealth is unattainable, just that the wealth of the 1% is unattainable. A reasonable amount of wealth (middle/upper-middle class) is attainable. As other people have commented, most people don't care even to be in the 1%.

TeeWEE 10y ago

Basically having Rich parents makes it easier to become rich. This is even true in the Netherlands. I see children buying houses with parents money and subrenting it to make a profit. I just cant do this, i don't have the capital

LeonM 10y ago
I second this. Not having parents who spend their life accumulating wealth (read: bought a house which increased an order of magnitude in value over the last 20 years) makes it very hard to even afford a house for your own use, let alone buying one to rent out. With the wealth gap growing ever larger, it becomes increasingly hard to 'break out' of the (lower) middle class.
- breser 10y ago
  Where the heck are you living that your house's value increased by an order of magnitude over 20 years. I live in one of the hottest real estate markets in the country, I bought in 1999 and my house is just barely under doubling in value. If not for the mess of 2008 it might have been worth more, since it was about where it is now before that crash. But I can't think of any place where people have seen an order of magnitude increase in 20 years. Over a longer period (essentially a lifetime) I'm sure that's a possibility. So I suspect you've simply chosen your time period poorly.
- tiatia 10y ago
  With asses price inflation, depressed wages, insane taxes and and overaged population it is very hard in the EU. Only few make it. By plain luck or maybe by ability. But you can leave. Best decision I ever made.
  - jononor 10y ago
    Where did you go?
    - tiatia 10y ago
      I was born in the EU, got my PhD in the US and finally hard to start as an illegal immigrant in China and worked my way up. This being said, there are opportunities everywhere. China. Angola. Colombia. Even Ethiopia. There are opportunities out there for the people who are willing to try or who are forced to try. Places, where there is still some growth, some opportunity and the government does not strangle you. The best incentive may be if there is something that you like. Be it the weather, culture, language, women. Something that touches you. I saw too many people fail in China. This were the people who wanted to eat every day McDonnalds or Subway instead of Chinese food and called the Chinese "savages". Immerse yourself in that culture. Become that culture. Or how the Chinese say: What you can't avoid, welcome!
  - patrickaljord 10y ago
    Same here, left to Peru and worked remotely, saved a bunch. Even if you have no coding skills, you can save up to 10 or 20k euro and open a bar in Peru or any other developing countries, I knew people who did this in Peru and were doing great. Social ladder is dead in the EU, time to move elsewhere folks, don't expect anything to change. A European/US passport and a few saving is one of the biggest and most unknown privilege Westerners have. It doesn't help that people are taught to expect help from the government instead of improving their lives by themselves.
jamesrcole 10y ago
Basically having Rich parents makes it easier to become rich. This is even true in the Netherlands. I imagine this is true everywhere. The only variance I can imagine is in how much easier it makes it.

sagivo 10y ago

TL;DR - have a rich family or marry a rich person. if neither work - go to harvard and hope

saycheese 10y ago

Once was speaker before a few hundred recent grads and asked if they wanted to be a billionaire. Only a few raised there hands. My theory is most people want more stuff, few really want to be billionaires, or even just part of the 1%.

croon 10y ago
> My theory is most people want more stuff, few really want more enough money to be a billionaire, or even just part of the 1%. Or it's unreasonable to expect to be able to, and few people dream about stuff they know can never happen. To avoid disappointment.
- jhbadger 10y ago
  Or they know that even if they could they would have to step on a lot of people's toes and compromise many of their own principles to do it. That's kind of the problem of rising in any hierarchy -- you basically have to become the sort of person you'd likely dislike to do it.
Inconel 10y ago
I don't really want more stuff, and I could comfortably live off of ~$20k per year here in LA, but I would love to be a billionaire. On second thought, I do actually want more stuff too, I'd love to have my own welding/machining workshop.
- jacquesm 10y ago
  > I'd love to have my own welding/machining workshop. Given your username that's redundant :) Being a billionaire also has downsides, it will be much harder to tell people that genuinely like you from people that are just trying to get into your good graces because they are after your money.
  - Inconel 10y ago
    >Given your username that's redundant :) Indeed, there are so many projects I want to work on outside of my real job. I'm sure it would have many downsides as well, although if I could attain a high level of wealth and remain relatively anonymous it could be the best of both worlds. I do think fame would be very hard to deal with, especially for someone with my personality.

HugoDaniel 10y ago

By America they mean the country "USA". Not Brazil or Mexico or any other part of America. Given the salary inequality between the USA and most of the other countries in America it is easy to automatically imply that you only need to be in the USA to get rich in America.

juanito 10y ago
I know it's very confusing to a lot of people, but USA stands for United States of America. It's also the only country in the world that has America in its name.
- GFischer 10y ago
  Ironically it's not the only United States in America (but it is the only one with America in the name I believe) Mexico is the United States of Mexico, there also were United States of Colombia, United States of Venezuela (now renamed to simply Venezuela), etc... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mexico https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mexico (Wikipedia doesn't show the official name in the title) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_of_Colombia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_of_Colombia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_of_Venezuela https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_of_Venezuela
vthallam 10y ago
I know America is a continent and all that, but more often than not people refer America to USA.
- GFischer 10y ago
  Only in the U.S./English. If you refer to "America" in Spanish it's assumed you're referring to the continent, the state is commonly referred to as the United States or the United States of America. We actually call ourselves Americans here in Uruguay. https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uso_de_la_palabra_americano https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uso_de_la_palabra_americano "En el uso tradicional a los naturales de América como continente. En un segundo término, a los ciudadanos de Estados Unidos de América, uso derivado de la influencia lingüística inglesa."

dibstern 10y ago

As though a huge number of poor immigrants haven't come to the US and succeeded massively, after coming from nothing? Is this person serious?

aninhumer 10y ago
I'm sure many immigrants have a much better quality of life than they did before moving to the US, but very few of them actually become rich.
otalp 10y ago
A huge number certainly haven't succeeded massively. A few have. Also a lot of legal migrants already come from (relatively) rich families since US migration can be expensive and favours the educated.

Frogolocalypse 10y ago

It's probably no surprise that the same people that think hard work is what leads to success are the same people that don't understand what the wealth distribution actually looks like in america. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Wealth_Inequality_in_America_by_politizane.webm https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Wealth_Inequality_in_Amer...

Noughmad 10y ago
The actual distribution looks exactly like the 80/20 rule. So even though that may not be ideal, it is definitely not shocking or unexpected.
- Frogolocalypse 10y ago
  No. It doesn't. More like a 60/1 rule. Or a 40/0.1 rule.
- flexie 10y ago
  It's far from the 80/20 rule. The richest 1% has 40% of the wealth. The poorest 80% has 7 percent of wealth.
  - Noughmad 10y ago
    The 80/20 rule also says that 20% of the top 20% has 80% of the 80% of the total wealth. If you apply it three times, you get (0.2)^3 = 0.8% of the population has (0.8)^3 = 0.51% of the wealth. Which is even worse than what you see in the graph. Also, your 7% number is wrong, from the graph it seems the poorest 80% has about 16%, which is less than the one predicted by 80/20, but not by much. Again, I am not saying this is fair. The Pareto principle doesn't say this is healthy for a society, only that it is common.
homakov 10y ago
Hard work is only option. "having rich parents" is a personal condition... you cannot choose condition, universe does not work like that - and every second we discuss income inequality is a wasted second. Thus we end up with hard work option

homakov 10y ago

Blah blah college. Degree has nothing to do with getting rich

pg314 10y ago
From the article: Few engineers, nurses or pharmacists make it to the top 1%, which is dominated by bankers and other financiers. Do you think the statement in the article is wrong? Based on what? Do you think a college degree is irrelevant to become a banker or other financier?
- homakov 10y ago
  Get rich != become a banker. The article would be accurate if it said "how to become a banker"
  - pg314 10y ago
    > Get rich != become a banker. The article doesn't say that. The passage I quoted doesn't say that either.
- kgwgk 10y ago
  Don't engineers, nurses and pharmacists have degrees?

princetontiger 10y ago

This article is about employers hiring Ivy League graduates. Why is this news? The phenomenon is just as acute in SV as it is on Wall Street. The Tier 1 schools in the US are the Ivy League, MIT, and Stanford. Getting into these great schools starts by being incredibly precious in elementary school and middle school, and really accelerating the positive energy and focus in high school.

adriand 10y ago

Radiolab recently featured (http://www.radiolab.org/story/radiolab-presents-media-busted-americas-poverty-myths/ http://www.radiolab.org/story/radiolab-presents-media-busted...) some content from another podcast series called "Busted: America’s Poverty Myths", that examines various myths about the poor - and by extension, the rich - in the US. It was fascinating. One thing that was discussed is the degree of upward economic mobility in the USA. IIRC, they measure this by the likelihood that someone who is born into a family that is in the bottom 20% of earners enters the top 20% of earners in their lifetime. In other words, what is the statistical basis for the belief that in America, anyone can go from "rags to riches"? It turns out that in the US, the percentage of people who achieve this feat is, on average, about 7%. In Canada, it's about 13.5%. Another myth busted. Conclusion: if you want to get rich in the Americas - or at least, well-off in the Americas - come immigrate to Canada. Especially if you're reading this comment, since you likely have the kind of education and experience that makes immigrating here a breeze. Sure, it's cold here in the winter, but you'll make enough cash that you can spend a chunk of the winter in Mexico!

auxym 10y ago
People reading this on HN are probably already in the top 20% of earners, or close enough. As such, they are likely better off in the US. Edit: actually, based off a quick Google search, it seems that if you earn 150k, you are in fact in the top 5%
- imaginenore 10y ago
  Which I wouldn't consider rich. Moderately wealthy, but not enough to even buy a 2br in SF or Manhattan.
  - jononor 10y ago
    Richer than 95% of people in your country is not rich?
    - dsacco 10y ago

aabajian 10y ago

>>"Between 1999 and 2004, just 2% of Princetonians came from the families in the lowest 20% of earnings, while 3.2% came from families in the top 0.1%" These kinds of statistics are appalling to me. I wonder if they continue along the income percentiles (e.g. top 5% has a greater chance than lower 30%, or so). My parents are as middle-class as it comes, one is a nurse and the other is a probation officer. Their combined income is about $150,000. The top 0.1% make > $1.5 million per year. How can your parent's income have such a dramatic effect on your access to college? Is it not enough applicants? Is it lower performance on AP exams? Is it the inability to pay tuition? I may be a bit bitter as I'm set to graduate med school with $250,000 in debt. It's hard for me to fathom having parents who could pay my tuition four times over every year.

lmm 10y ago
If your family income is $150,000 that puts you well above the average - you're probably in the top, what, 5%?
douche 10y ago
If your parents made less money, all other things being equal, you'd be in better shape. $150k just gets you out of the income bracket that gets heavy financial aid from the endowments at top-tier schools, and so you, or someone, has to pay nearly full-price. In comparison, my teacher and mechanic parents made slightly under 100k, underneath the line where financial aid kicked in heavily enough to be competitive with my local state university, and so I graduated with just the federal Perkins and Stafford loans I had to take out, to the tune of around 20k in debt.

scep43198u 10y ago

But this just assumes that everyone is striving to get into 0.1% equally, where it might make more sense assuming that someone who goes to Wall Street wants to get rich more than a nurse. It's like saying it's a lot "easier" being in top physical shape if you exercise at top sport facilities in the country, and/or already come from a family of athletes. Both of which are already signals you might be trying very hard in the first place. Coming from rich families might also mean being rich and making money is more socially valued. And rich families don't posses only money and connections which makes it easier, they probably also have good knowledge of how to make money and where money can be made compared to working class families. So before jumping to any conclusions on how easy it is and why it is easier exactly, stuff like that needs to be thought through a bit.

deleted 10y ago

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saycheese 10y ago

Here's a quick lookup for US annual household income ranks/percentile based on US Census Bureau data: http://money.cnn.com/calculator/pf/income-rank/ http://money.cnn.com/calculator/pf/income-rank/ As of 2014, to be in the top 1% of income earners by household, you needed to make roughly $420,000 a year.

dgrealy 10y ago

Is entrepreneurism dead, or something? On HN of all places it isn't even mentioned in the comments? I think so many of the entrepreneurial doers left HN or stopped participating in discussions long ago.

akhilcacharya 10y ago
Getting "rich" from entrepreneurship isn't very practical in most cases IMO. From Dan Luu - http://danluu.com/startup-tradeoffs/ http://danluu.com/startup-tradeoffs/
- dgrealy 10y ago
  ... that is a link about equity tradeoffs as an employee. You've demonstrated not even knowing the definition of the word! Incredible really.
  - akhilcacharya 10y ago
    In terms of risk founders take on more than startup employees take on more than bigcorp employees too. The tradeoffs for the founders are even worse. http://startupclass.samaltman.com/courses/lec01/#annotations:4119881 http://startupclass.samaltman.com/courses/lec01/#annotations...
    - dgrealy 10y ago
      Entrepreneurism is still very much alive. Down but not out. However for this board, talk of it is decimated. To the point where the only mention of it is in this thread, where I am speaking to one person, who needed to be reminded what it even means.

kamaal 10y ago

Came to work in the US. Have moved back to my home country. But would love to come to US again(A great country, no doubt). A few things that I have noticed. 1. It can be really quite hard to get rich(like crazy rich) as a programmer unless you have a very generous stock grant package. When I mean generous, I mean like really in the upper order of 6 figures. Given tax is going to eat a good bunch of it. 2. Taxes will eat a lot of your salary and bonus. So any dream of making it big out of saving up monthly salary is absurd to a large extent. 3. What makes 2. even more so true is at some point in time you have to buy a home, and take some responsibilities with regards to kids and family. Your savings cache will only decrease. If you are in the Bay area, rents will eat your ice cream. Buying a home is in the order of >=$1 million. Kids can be expensive if you want them to have a good future. If you want to buy a home, you will lose half your life to monthly payments. Plus comes the regular fear of defaulting on payments in phases of financial crises and job losses. And also be prepared for routine house maintenance expenses and property taxes. Overall life is hard for immigrants. But I can imagine it would be the same for US citizens who come from poverty. Education would come at a thick debt on top of which you have to build the above points I mentioned. Life if pretty much paycheck to the next. Paying monthly installment for car, bills, mortgage etc. Somethings that I like about the US:- Social security, infrastructure, uniform quality of education, merit and overall values on which the country is built. Overall there is better appreciation for merit and quality than most countries. If you are in the US you have already made it big by many a definition. You just have to go farther.

klibertp 10y ago
> Somethings that I like about the US:- Social security, ?!? That's literally against everything I ever read about USA (living in EU, never been to USA).
- kamaal 10y ago
  Depends on where you come from. I come from India, here we have 0 social security. Any upgrade from 0 is good.
  - 10y ago

f055 10y ago

One thing often omitted, or taken for granted, in the "rich parents" discussion is the curious question of "How did the parents get rich?" Did they have rich parents too? Or did they actually started from very low and got clever/lucky/hardworking. If you think of it this way, having rich parents may not be a magic privilege, a "silver spoon", but a consequence of their effort and sacrifice. Their children do not have to bear the same sacrifice. But you, whose parents weren't that clever/lucky/hardworking, you need to bear the sacrifice - maybe even not to get rich, but give enough of a good start for your children to get rich, and you grandchildren to be called privileged.

washadjeffmad 10y ago
Sacrifice implies you lose something with nothing gained. These people generated wealth and got posterity and legacy. They bought that with their work, volitionally, and bore the responsibility of the dedication required to keep it. You aren't sacrificing your money to buy yourself lunch, providing for your kids isn't a sacrifice, and you aren't sacrificing by working more hours to afford that big house and nice car you have. It's just hard sometimes, but it's all part of the bargain.
- restalis 10y ago
  "Sacrifice implies you lose something with nothing gained." Not true. That is just pure loss. According to its definition¹, "sacrifice" means either "to surrender or give up, or permit injury or disadvantage to, for the sake of something else" or "to dispose of (goods, property, etc.) regardless of profit". Parents working hard in order to provide for their kids may involve something from both of the meanings. "you aren't sacrificing by working more hours to afford that big house and nice car you have" It depends on how you look at it, and working more hours for a nice house and car can be both a transaction and a sacrifice. If you consider the leisure time you have to give up (assuming that you don't particularly enjoy your work) then it's a sacrifice. If you consider the time and energy involved in the paid work then it's just a transaction. ¹ http://www.dictionary.com/browse/sacrifice http://www.dictionary.com/browse/sacrifice
- f055 10y ago

myf01d 10y ago

It should have been "how to get rich". However, at least in America nepotism plays a lower role in many professions compared to many other countries because competition is much rougher.

deleted 10y ago

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akhilcacharya 10y ago

So what do we do if we don't go to Princeton? Or even UIUC?