> I assume by "rich" they are talking top 10% or whatever of society? I live in the UK and it's well-known that you can't just get there through hard work. In

> I assume by "rich" they are talking top 10% or whatever of society? I live in the UK and it's well-known that you can't just get there through hard work. In UK, you need to have wealth of £176,221, excluding personal possessions, to qualify to top 10% percent of wealth, and ~£35,345 per year (2008 data [1], so it's probably ~45k in 2021) to qualify to top 10% of income. I don't think it's impossible to achieve by hard work. > I could have easily ended up staying in academia and there's simply no way I would ever have been able to earn this much. If you stayed in academia, you would probably qualify as top ~12% of income. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Income_in_the_United_Kingdom#High_income https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Income_in_the_United_Kingdom#H...