zlacker

Don't look at the top .1%. Look at the top 5% and you find some very rich people who are "self made". They didn't inherit. Even in the top .1% you find the likes of Bill Gates who started out pretty average (there is a lot of luck in his story or course)

>>bluGil+(OP)
Bill Gates' grandpa was a national bank president, and his father was a wealthy lawyer, president of the state bar association. As a child Gates was deliberately trained by his parents to make everything into a contest. He went to the best private prep school in Washington State, and among high school students worldwide, he ended up with something like top 0.01% access to computers at the time. There's nothing "pretty average" about his story; he was part of the top <1% by wealth, prestige, and support right from the get-go. [Which is not to say that Gates didn't work like hell, including making heaps of unethical choices, to end up as a billionaire.]

> Look at the top 5% and you find some very rich people [...]

The top 5% does not predominately consist of "very rich people". The 95th percentile is "upper middle class", people like relatively ordinary white-collar professionals and successful small-business owners including tradespeople who run their own shops, etc. We're talking about "own a nice house, take vacations, and can afford to retire comfortably" money, not "fleet of servants" money.

>>bluGil+(OP)
Even in the top 0.1% many are self made. My comment wasn't about whether they are self-made or not (and many people who got a head start in life have done very impressive things, one of the surgeons who pioneered transplant surgery was from a very wealthy midwestern family who made their money from the railroad industry). My comment was about Byrne's assertion that there are more ways to become rich that don't require social skills than ones that do. That doesn't seem true to me.

>>jacobo+m2
10%: $168k

5%: $336k

1%: $819k

0.1%: $3.3m

The income curve is a hockey stick that goes vertical at the far right side and it keeps getting steeper over time. https://www.investopedia.com/personal-finance/how-much-incom...