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> People who have wealth are going to be better with that wealth than people who don't. Do you have any empirical data to back that up? The lack of old money t

> People who have wealth are going to be better with that wealth than people who don't. Do you have any empirical data to back that up? The lack of old money that Gates alludes to in his article seems to suggest otherwise. Even with the advantages that simply having large amounts of wealth gives you (better education, easier access to seed capital for new ventures, better access to other influential people etc), surprisingly few of the modern day mega rich in the US started out with large amounts of wealth. There's also plenty of evidence (such as http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2014-07-22/for-ceos-correlation-between-pay-and-stock-performance-is-pretty-random http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2014-07-22/for-ceos-cor...) to suggest there's little, if any, correlation between how much a CEO earns and the success of a company. > The average person isn't as well equipped to deal with large problems as the elite are. I would agree that not everyone is equally well equipped to deal with large problems, but I don't see much evidence to suggest that there's much correlation between wealth and ability to successfully tackle the myriad problems facing the average society. Is a multi-millionaire businessman automatically better placed to decide on education policy than a teaching professional, or on the structure of a nations health service than medical professionals etc?

nathan_long 12y ago
>> People who have wealth are going to be better with that wealth than people who don't. > Do you have any empirical data to back that up? The lack of old money that Gates alludes to in his article seems to suggest otherwise. Gates looked at a list of the very wealthiest people and asked how many inherited their wealth. Even if the answer is 0%, we could still ask about other brackets. Eg, how likely are Gates' descendants to be in the bottom income bracket? How likely are the children of someone in the bottom bracket to be middle class?

nathan_long 12y ago

>> People who have wealth are going to be better with that wealth than people who don't. > Do you have any empirical data to back that up? The lack of old money that Gates alludes to in his article seems to suggest otherwise. Gates looked at a list of the very wealthiest people and asked how many inherited their wealth. Even if the answer is 0%, we could still ask about other brackets. Eg, how likely are Gates' descendants to be in the bottom income bracket? How likely are the children of someone in the bottom bracket to be middle class?