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Your anecdotes not withstanding, it is a myth that most rich people inherited their wealth. https://www.cnbc.com/2019/09/26/majority-of-the-worlds-richest-peop

Your anecdotes not withstanding, it is a myth that most rich people inherited their wealth. https://www.cnbc.com/2019/09/26/majority-of-the-worlds-richest-people-are-self-made-says-new-report.html https://www.cnbc.com/2019/09/26/majority-of-the-worlds-riche... Maybe you don't trust this source but there are many others like it. This bizarre push to make everyone think that there's no meritocracy, which I guess goes hand in hand with the fashionableness of being a victim, is cynical poison being driven by people with radical political agendas.

robocat 5y ago
Your example is like saying playing NBA basketball makes you taller. His point was that there are plenty of people that don’t become wealthy even though they work hard and have hustle. And there are plenty of wealthy people that didn’t need to work hard to get it. Looking at the self-made wealthy will select for people that “do”, but that does not imply that “do” makes you wealthy.
- gotoeleven 5y ago
  Im not sure what your point is. Your statement >>> His point was that there are plenty of people that don’t become wealthy even though they work hard and have hustle. And there are plenty of wealthy people that didn’t need to work hard to get it. is a trivially correct, banal point. The parent comment was implying with his "I know even more people who are rich and lazy" comment something that, while it may be true for the people he encounters, is not true for society at large.
  - robocat 5y ago
    You said “it is a myth that most rich people inherited their wealth”, which you introduced as a subject, and I don’t think his comment was trying to say anything about your point exactly, either way. He said he was talking anecdotally, i.e. he was explicitly talking about his experiences which are true by definition, and not generalising to what your experience might be.
  - mcguire 5y ago
    "The parent comment was implying [...] something that, while it may be true for the people he encounters, is not true for society at large." Do you have a source for that?
- sokoloff 5y ago
  For any given individual "do" is almost surely better than "not do". That's the choice facing an individual as they contemplate how to live their life.
  - robocat 5y ago
    I have just decided to be four inches taller than I am /s. I have depressed friends that I believe can’t reasonably be expected to just decide to “do”, and I have other friends that seem to naturally have an abundance of “do”. Yes, we can learn the skill, or we can be taught the skill, but otherwise your statement seems unrealistic to me.
    - andrewjl 5y ago
      IMO both you and GP are correct, ultimately whether the decision to "do" helps or not relies on individual circumstance and context plus on chance factors.
    - shadowoflight 5y ago
      I think one important thing that we, as a society, need to respect is that the amount of "do" it takes a given person to do a given task is very different from the amount of "do" it takes another person to do that same task. For example, it may take somebody who's depressed the same amount of "do" to get out of bed and eat a yogurt as it takes a go-getter, "neurotypical" [0] person to get up, cook a healthy breakfast, go to the gym, take a shower, get to work, and get through their first couple tasks of the day. [0]: I put "neurotypical" in scare quotes because I'm not sure neurotypical is even really a thing, it's just the term we use for people whose mental makeup fits well into our society and work culture.
  - asoneth 5y ago
    I completely agree. But I there's a middle ground between "nothing you do matters" and "you can accomplish absolutely anything if you put your mind to it". People at either extreme of the spectrum are more likely to end up disappointed with their lives than someone in the middle.
mcguire 5y ago
Would you please define "self-made"? From your link: "“As our society has become more meritocratic, we’ve simply replaced an aristocracy based on title, class, race and gender with a new and equally persistent aristocracy based on genes, education and parenting,” Pearlstein continued. “Unless we are prepared to engage in extensive genetic reengineering, or require that all children be brought up in state-run boarding schools, we must acknowledge that we can never achieve full equality of opportunity.”"
asoneth 5y ago
I have only met one of the "world's richest people" on the list you linked and he is very hard working but I think the conclusions drawn from extreme outliers may not be applicable more broadly. I think perhaps we're talking about different things? I don't think it's fashionable to be a victim or that people have no control over their fate. Hard work (along with intellect and luck) generally helps people move up in life, and the people I know who have moved up the most in their lives are generally also the smartest and hardest working, so it would make logical sense that most people at the very top have worked hard to get there. After all, not many people out there can fall down a couple rungs and still be at the top of the ladder, right? But beyond those extreme outliers, most people in the US (which ranks 27th in social mobility according to the world economic forum[1]) seem to end up within a rung or two of where they were born. So I suppose how "meritocratic" the US is probably depends on what you mean by the word. [1] http://reports.weforum.org/social-mobility-report-2020/social-mobility-rankings/ http://reports.weforum.org/social-mobility-report-2020/socia...
kenjackson 5y ago
> it is a myth that most rich people inherited their wealth. No one here has said that. More importantly, your link doesn't dispute that either. It simply says that billionaires, who are on the extreme, don't inherit most of their wealth -- despite the fact that 45% of them at least partially did so. I've long argued that until we send all kids, rich and poor, to academies at birth with no further contact or tracing to their parents, we won't really understand the full impact of advantages bestowed by wealthy parents.
bryondowd 5y ago
These studies almost always point to a very limited set of the "wealthiest" for their study. And if you think about it, it's obvious that the very top of the pyramid will mostly have people who were able to concentrate wealth somehow, rather than inheritors. Often, inheritance is split between more than one person. That alone would account for a lot of inherited wealth not meeting an arbitrarily "wealthiest" category. So naturally there's going to be a lot of churn at the top.

robocat 5y ago

Your example is like saying playing NBA basketball makes you taller. His point was that there are plenty of people that don’t become wealthy even though they work hard and have hustle. And there are plenty of wealthy people that didn’t need to work hard to get it. Looking at the self-made wealthy will select for people that “do”, but that does not imply that “do” makes you wealthy.

gotoeleven 5y ago
Im not sure what your point is. Your statement >>> His point was that there are plenty of people that don’t become wealthy even though they work hard and have hustle. And there are plenty of wealthy people that didn’t need to work hard to get it. is a trivially correct, banal point. The parent comment was implying with his "I know even more people who are rich and lazy" comment something that, while it may be true for the people he encounters, is not true for society at large.
- robocat 5y ago
  You said “it is a myth that most rich people inherited their wealth”, which you introduced as a subject, and I don’t think his comment was trying to say anything about your point exactly, either way. He said he was talking anecdotally, i.e. he was explicitly talking about his experiences which are true by definition, and not generalising to what your experience might be.
- mcguire 5y ago
  "The parent comment was implying [...] something that, while it may be true for the people he encounters, is not true for society at large." Do you have a source for that?
sokoloff 5y ago
For any given individual "do" is almost surely better than "not do". That's the choice facing an individual as they contemplate how to live their life.
- robocat 5y ago
  I have just decided to be four inches taller than I am /s. I have depressed friends that I believe can’t reasonably be expected to just decide to “do”, and I have other friends that seem to naturally have an abundance of “do”. Yes, we can learn the skill, or we can be taught the skill, but otherwise your statement seems unrealistic to me.
  - andrewjl 5y ago
    IMO both you and GP are correct, ultimately whether the decision to "do" helps or not relies on individual circumstance and context plus on chance factors.
  - shadowoflight 5y ago
    I think one important thing that we, as a society, need to respect is that the amount of "do" it takes a given person to do a given task is very different from the amount of "do" it takes another person to do that same task. For example, it may take somebody who's depressed the same amount of "do" to get out of bed and eat a yogurt as it takes a go-getter, "neurotypical" [0] person to get up, cook a healthy breakfast, go to the gym, take a shower, get to work, and get through their first couple tasks of the day. [0]: I put "neurotypical" in scare quotes because I'm not sure neurotypical is even really a thing, it's just the term we use for people whose mental makeup fits well into our society and work culture.
- asoneth 5y ago
  I completely agree. But I there's a middle ground between "nothing you do matters" and "you can accomplish absolutely anything if you put your mind to it". People at either extreme of the spectrum are more likely to end up disappointed with their lives than someone in the middle.

mcguire 5y ago

Would you please define "self-made"? From your link: "“As our society has become more meritocratic, we’ve simply replaced an aristocracy based on title, class, race and gender with a new and equally persistent aristocracy based on genes, education and parenting,” Pearlstein continued. “Unless we are prepared to engage in extensive genetic reengineering, or require that all children be brought up in state-run boarding schools, we must acknowledge that we can never achieve full equality of opportunity.”"

asoneth 5y ago

I have only met one of the "world's richest people" on the list you linked and he is very hard working but I think the conclusions drawn from extreme outliers may not be applicable more broadly. I think perhaps we're talking about different things? I don't think it's fashionable to be a victim or that people have no control over their fate. Hard work (along with intellect and luck) generally helps people move up in life, and the people I know who have moved up the most in their lives are generally also the smartest and hardest working, so it would make logical sense that most people at the very top have worked hard to get there. After all, not many people out there can fall down a couple rungs and still be at the top of the ladder, right? But beyond those extreme outliers, most people in the US (which ranks 27th in social mobility according to the world economic forum[1]) seem to end up within a rung or two of where they were born. So I suppose how "meritocratic" the US is probably depends on what you mean by the word. [1] http://reports.weforum.org/social-mobility-report-2020/social-mobility-rankings/ http://reports.weforum.org/social-mobility-report-2020/socia...

kenjackson 5y ago

> it is a myth that most rich people inherited their wealth. No one here has said that. More importantly, your link doesn't dispute that either. It simply says that billionaires, who are on the extreme, don't inherit most of their wealth -- despite the fact that 45% of them at least partially did so. I've long argued that until we send all kids, rich and poor, to academies at birth with no further contact or tracing to their parents, we won't really understand the full impact of advantages bestowed by wealthy parents.

bryondowd 5y ago

These studies almost always point to a very limited set of the "wealthiest" for their study. And if you think about it, it's obvious that the very top of the pyramid will mostly have people who were able to concentrate wealth somehow, rather than inheritors. Often, inheritance is split between more than one person. That alone would account for a lot of inherited wealth not meeting an arbitrarily "wealthiest" category. So naturally there's going to be a lot of churn at the top.