6 ms·
Zuckerberg,Bezos,Gates.Behind Every Self-Made Millionaire Is a Father with Money
- mcpackieh 3y ago> Behind Every Self-Made Millionaire Is a Father with Money Dumb headline, obviously wrong. It may be true for those billionaires but there are many millionaires for which this isn't true. I know single-digit millionaires who ran away from home as teenagers and never had anything to do with their parents again.
- czechdeveloper 3y agoYou know what is difference between a million and a billion? Approximately a billion.
- brigadier132 3y agoSo given that, these million dollar loans they received from family to start their businesses really don't amount to much. And Bezos only got $240k.
- KPGv2 3y agoOnly 240K. The big thing here isn't that they get loans. It's that they can keep taking risks, knowing they'll be OK if they fail. I can't remember the exact quote, but essentially middle class people have one big shot they can afford to fail at. The children of the wealthy can keep taking them.
- Thorrez 3y agoSo basically, poor to billionaire is impossible in 1 generation, but poor to billionaire is possible in 2 generations.
- whatscooking 3y agoSmh, that’s like half a million in todays money for free from his parents…
- czechdeveloper 3y agoTo be honest, I do care way more about how horrible work conditions they provide in their companies. Especially to the more vulnerable and low paying positions.
- mcpackieh 3y agoYes, there's a huge difference between a billion and a million. That's why the headline talking about billionaires as millionaires is dumb.
- beardyw 3y agoAh, I remember when a billion really was a billion. These paltry thousand millions are chicken feed. "Previously in British English (but not in American English), the word "billion" referred exclusively to a million millions (1,000,000,000,000). However, this is not common anymore, and the word has been used to mean one thousand million (1,000,000,000) for several decades." https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1,000,000,000 https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1,000,000,000
- pepa65 3y agobillion = million x million [bi] trillion = million x million x million [tri] This is still the case in Dutch for instance, where 1e9 is a "miljard".
- 1letterunixname 3y agoIt should be apparent that the movement of balance sheets (in the form of income sheets) can be modeled approximately by (discrete and/or discontinuous) partial differential equations. The fundamental principle is rate of change of the balance sheet is relatively proportional to the amount present. Qualitatively, "It takes money to make money." Thus, a homeless person getting from $0 to $1M cannot be had without some range of help of others and a person growing at roughly $100M to $101M shouldn't be as difficult per se. Corollary: If you can count your money, then you're not rich. (Liquid net worth is always an educated guess, varies by kinds of assets and debts, liquidation timeframe, and varies by the day.)
- rewmie 3y ago> It may be true for those billionaires but there are many millionaires for which this isn't true. The term "with money" is subjective and open to interpretation, but I don't think that it means "middle-class" either. Due to inflation, the term "millionaire" today does not convey the same meaning that it did a few years ago. Middle class families with high 5-/low six-digit incomes can aspire to become millionaires by passively saving their salary. This is definitely what "millionaire" means.
- mcpackieh 3y agoI agree, but the article was written in 2023 when middle class families can reasonably aspire to become millionaires, so making the headline talking about millionaires being impossibly privileged just seems inexcusably lazy and dishonest to me.
- gnicholas 3y ago> Mike Bezos, Jeff’s adoptive father and a Cuban immigrant who worked as an engineer at Exxon, one of the world’s top oil companies So his "father with money" is a Cuban immigrant? That kind of changes the narrative.
- rewmie 3y ago> So his "father with money" is a Cuban immigrant? That kind of changes the narrative. An Exxon engineer is hardly a homeless begger.
- Turing_Machine 3y agoIt's also hardly a billionaire. Engineers are solidly middle-class.
- unforeseen9991 3y agoEspecially in Cuba
- rewmie 3y ago> It's also hardly a billionaire. I don't think the argument is that only billionaire heirs have a running start in life and access to significant family investments and connections. Also, I think that we can agree that a Cuban national that is employed by Exxon as an engineer can provide way more opportunities to their children than your average cuban immigrant.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- jonny_eh 3y agoWho can even afford to own a garage in which to be scrappy in these days?
- 1letterunixname 3y agoGarageBNB will be a Catch-22.
- brigadier132 3y agoHow are people reading this? It's behind a paywall.
- artursapek 3y agomy father paid for it
- brigadier132 3y agoI'll never be able to catch up to silver spoons like you with fat cat fathers willing to pay for medium. The world is so unfair
- gnicholas 3y agohttps://archive.ph/UaSya https://archive.ph/UaSya
- danjc 3y agoPaywalling a news site is understandable - I mean it's a business that needs to make money somehow. But (mostly) personal blogs? It's insanity that accessing it requires either a medium account (so you can be tracked) or that you use the app (so you can be tracked).
- thefz 3y agoThey have rich fathers.
- cuteboy19 3y agoAren't these the same people who say things like > the difference between a billion dollars and a million dollars is a billion dollars Mobility is bad unless it's literally from zero to billion?
- hindsightbias 3y agoThe Dells weren’t poor either
- friend_and_foe 3y agoFunny, the only mention of Elon Musk is in the description of the header photo... I wonder, why include him in the photo at all if you're not going to talk about him? Did he have rich parents? So what I'm getting from the article is that these three men lived in middle class households in the 70s, 80s and 90s, a period in America with a strong middle class, and that by today's standards had well off parents, but by the standards at the time, maybe only a little better off than the average person? There's a big difference between withdrawing a quarter million dollars from the bank and taking out a home equity loan and risking your security to help your son's business venture.
- nomilk 3y ago> why include (Musk) in the photo if you're not going to talk about him? Answer: www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clickbait
- whatscooking 3y agoEveryone knows Elon Musk’s father owned a emerald mine in Zambia. The only person who denies it is Elon.
- inemesitaffia 3y agoThere's no evidence of actual ownership
- friend_and_foe 3y agoMusk has a million dogecoin bounty for anyone who can prove that claim. There are interviews with his dad where his dad says basically he bought some emeralds from an Italian guy who was chiseling them from a rock in the ground. That's a far cry away from an emerald mine fortune, when I think "emerald mine" I think John of God level fortunes, and they used what money they made to move out of South Africa. From my understanding they were middle class at best.
- rr2841 3y agoI find entertaining the show of cynicism when Musk himself started the rumour about the emerald mine [0]: > Elon Musk: "... In South Africa, my father had a private plane we’d fly in incredibly dangerous weather and barely make it back. This is going to sound slightly crazy, but my father also had a share in an Emerald mine in Zambia." Musk's father gave an interview [1] where he explains what the mine business was about. He also shares that he had to sell his "ocean going yatch" to send his family money overseas. Musk is not a trust fund baby, but he wasn't coming from middle class either. [0] https://web.archive.org/web/20140729222547/http://www.forbes.com/sites/jimclash/2014/07/28/elon-musk-tells-me-his-secret-of-success-hint-it-aint-about-the-money/ https://web.archive.org/web/20140729222547/http://www.forbes... [1] https://www.the-sun.com/news/7911051/elon-musks-dad-errol-emerald-business/ https://www.the-sun.com/news/7911051/elon-musks-dad-errol-em...
- friend_and_foe 3y agoLol so now the article is getting edited as criticism builds in this thread? If that isn't evidence that someone's trying to create a narrative...
- footgunslinger 3y agoSteve Wozniak, Steve Jobs
- Grum9 3y ago[dead]
- sys_64738 3y agoThe narratives nowadays always try to paint Gates as a pillar of the community and ace businessman. But in reality his start was down to pure luck and then building a monopoly through illegal business practices and totally unethical behavior. The guy always will be a cretin.
- jwestbury 3y agoI don't know, I've seen an increase in people viewing "philanthropists" as, essentially, oligarchs trying to go under the radar -- using their money to mold society in the way they think is best, and ultimately just exercising power in a way that seems altruistic. Perhaps sometimes it is altruistic -- but there are clear examples of continuing to spend money on ideas they believe strongly in spite of the evidence (e.g., Bill Gates' billions spent on evaluating teachers based on test scores).
- mikhailfranco 3y agoNothing original from MS. All tech cloned (C#, Excel) or aquihire (Simonyi/Brodie for Word from XeroxParc) or corp acquisition (too many to mention), or some combination (Myrvold DSR, acquire a smart guy's company with a clone of IBM multitasking).
- sys_64738 3y agoThe Zuck has proven that getting lucky with one webpage is more about being in the right place at the right time, as opposed to any skill or business acumen he has. The strategy to buy up all the potential competitors in your space allows him to take the scattergun approach to extremes. But Zuck has proven that anything his Facebook company tries to grow organically is a disaster.
- lr1970 3y agoWell, there are anecdotes contrary to this proposition. For example Google's cofounder Sergey Brin [0] comes from an immigrant family of modest means, upper middle class perhaps but not rich. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sergey_Brin https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sergey_Brin