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The plural of anecdote is not data...

"This year, we gave each member of The Forbes 400 a score on a scale from 1 to 10 -- a 1 indicating the fortune was completely inherited, while a 10 was for a Horatio Alger-esque journey. We also did the analysis for every 10 years going back to 1984. Looking at the numbers over time, the data lead us to an interesting insight: in 1984, less than half of people on The Forbes 400 were self-made; today, 69% of the 400 created their own fortunes."

Hmmm.......I guessed 50 percent

So if you look at the Forbes 400, it's not by any means loaded with Dynasties like the Waltons, Carniegie, Mellons. If you go back just 2 or 3 generations most were just you're average working Joes.

I know in today's world it's "all about me" but it used to be 'all about family'

You can still see it today in many of the immigrants from Pakistan, The far East, India, and many other countries.
'

Frederick Christ Trump was born in the Bronx on October 11, 1905. He was the second of three children of German Lutheran immigrants Frederick and Elizabeth Christ Trump. Trump was conceived in Bavaria, where his parents had tried unsuccessfully to re-establish residency, returning to New York upon the SS Pennsylvania on July 1, 1905.[1] Soon after Trump's birth, the family moved to Woodhaven, Queens. When Trump was 12 years old, his father died in the 1918 flu pandemic.[2] From 1918 to 1923, he attended Richmond Hill High School in Queens;[3] he worked as a caddy, curb whitewasher, and delivery boy.[4] Meanwhile, Trump's mother continued the real-estate business his father had begun. Interested in becoming a builder, Trump took night classes in carpentry and reading blueprints.[5] He also studied plumbing, masonry, and electrical wiring via correspondence courses.[6] He graduated from Richmond Hill High School in 1923.[7][8]

William Henry Gates I or Sr. (1891–1969) and Lillian Elizabeth Rice (1891–1966); the couple had married in 1913. His father ran a small town furniture store.

That's from the top 35 of the Forbes 400. You can be wealthy without even being on that list. Everyone here has a chance to be successful. It's mostly based on your intelligence and the type of upbringing you have. Sure if you're at the very bottom you might not ever make it to wealthy......but you sure as hell can make it to comfortable.. From comfortable, your kids have all the opoortunity to become wealthy if you raise them right. Maybe they won't make the Forbes 400, but if they raise their kids right then they should have a shot at the top.

So maybe we all do have the same opportunity but our parents or grandparents blew it.

Larry Ellison was born in New York City, to an unwed Jewish mother.[5][6][7][8] His biological father was an Italian American United States Army Air Corps pilot.

Sheldon Gary Adelson was born in 1933, into a low-income family and grew up in the Dorchester neighborhood of Boston,

Phil Knight was born in Portland, Oregon to Bill Knight, a lawyer turned newspaper publisher, and his wife, Lota (Hatfield) Knight.[

Thomas Peterffy was born in Budapest, Hungary in 1944, in a hospital basement during a Russian air raid.[1][7] He left his engineering studies and emigrated to the United States as a refugee in 1965.

Ray Dalio was born in the Jackson Heights neighborhood of New York City's Queens borough.[6] He is the son of a jazz musician, Marino Dallolio (1911–2002), who "played the clarinet and saxophone at Manhattan jazz clubs such as the Copacabana," and Ann, a homemaker

Harold Hamm was born in Lexington, Oklahoma, the 13th and youngest child of Oklahoma cotton sharecroppers, Jane Elizabeth (née Sparks) and Leland Albert Hamm.[

Stephen Schwarzman was raised in a Jewish family in Huntingdon Valley, Pennsylvania, the son of Arline and Joseph Schwarzman.[4][5] His father owned Schwarzman's, a former dry-goods store in Philadelphia

Perf seriously out of touch with reality?

LOL.

Thank you, Captain Obvious.

Tell us something we don't know...

Zuckerberg was born on May 14, 1984, in White Plains, New York.[13] His parents are Karen (née Kempner), a psychiatrist, and Edward Zuckerberg, a dentist.

Jeff Bezos was born Jeffrey Preston Jorgensen on January 12, 1964, in Albuquerque, New Mexico, the son of Jacklyn Gise Jorgensen and Chicago, Illinois, native Ted Jorgensen.[7] At the time of his birth, his mother was a 17-year-old high school student, and his father was a bike shop owner.

Erotic.... While the kid with money might have it somewhat easier, either kid can do anything. I've seen plenty of kids of doctors and lawyers end up on the streets and addicted to drugs. I've also know kids who have come from the poorest parts of town who grew up on welfare in a single parent home who became doctors. If you have the desire to do great things, you will find a way.

Case in point..... A lower/middle class kid with divorced, different race parents became president.

@Having

No one is talking about being equal. The conversation is about having equal opportunity.

Here ya go . . .

In your town, I feel quite confident in stating this, there are good and bad parts of the area. Look at the kids. Tell me they have equal opportunity. They do not. One is concerned about food, clothing, roof over their head, drug neighborhood, etc. The other? That kid can do anything.

@Perfect

Wait . . .

What the fuck do you classify rags then? Does the person have to have less wealth than Gates to be classified a pauper?

I think Gates did was in the top 1% when he was being raised.

In fact, I think anyone other than Adelson and MAYBE Bloomberg did not have parents in the top 1%.

So if you think that there is no difference between opportunity given to someone in the top 1% versus someone in the bottom 1% you are seriously out of touch with reality in this matter. The top 1% does not have to act like an animal on the prey for food. Their 'hunting' consists of either a maid/butler handing them food or hunting through the refrigerator. The bottom 1%, yeah . . . that ain't what their life is like. And if you think that not having food still puts people on equal footing, wow.

Now have there been stories of people going from poverty into the 1%. Of course. I am one of them. I happened to have won the sperm lottery. But to think that I had the same opportunities as the 1% - ROFL. No fucking way.

All depends on the scale you wish to attach to Rags and to Riches, they are of course subjective. Just spit balling here I'd imagine that a pretty large cross section of the respondents here are closer to Riches than to Rags. I'd further spit ball that those closer to Riches were not born with a silver spoon in their mouth. So each took the opportunities available to anyone else and made their best of it.

"So . . . where is this mass amount of people who are rags to riches?

Well, you mentioned like 6 people.

As I said, it's starts with responsible parents........you know, each generation doing better than the one before..........each having better opportunities to achieve wealth and success. The key word is OPPORTUNITY.

erotica, humans from the same women are not equal. Can you imagine if we were all equal, nothing would get done? Success, "if you can't originate, imitate". Socialism fails!

" Name the 30 richest people in the country and see if their grandparents or great grandparents were wealthy. My guess is less than half"

Wealth is subjective.

Want to look at Bill Gates. Were his parents wealthy? No where near the level of him. However, his father was a very well off attorney.
The Walton family. Well, seeing that it all came from dad, Sam.
Buffet - dad was a congressman.
Koch brothers - daddy.
Google peeps - Page's dad was one of the first to have a PhD in CompSci.
Bloomberg - you are probably right here. His dad was an accountant.
Adelson - yup, that is a rags to riches. But to be able to borrow $200 in 1945 as a 12 year old . . . hmm.
Michael Dell - dad was an orthodontist, mom a stock broker.

So . . . where is this mass amount of people who are rags to riches?

AZ is correct in this aspect. We do not even take our first breath out of the womb being equal. We are all born unequal. Some have a significant benefit.

"Might. And they are just as likely for that opportunity to come from winning the lottery as from actual hard work"

I thought you were against equal outcomes? Name the 30 richest people in the country and see if their grandparents or great grandparents were wealthy. My guess is less than half

" You saying our STANDARD OF LIVING is losing?"

Not at all. But it would take more than 25 words to explain.

"I think every country should run a huge trade surplus with way China does."

What is wrong with that statement? If you don't see the flaw, then you are probably beyond hope.

AZ you are crazy, "a few to win big, the vast majority have to lose." You saying our STANDARD OF LIVING is losing?

"then HIS or Her Children very well might have the same opportunity as Donald Trump"

Might. And they are just as likely for that opportunity to come from winning the lottery as from actual hard work.

The system, as currently set up, requires that for a few to win big, the vast majority have to lose.

Or are you saying that every country should run a huge trade deficit as China does?

"Or, do you honestly think a kid born to minimum wage earning parents had equal opportunity to Trump with his hundreds of millions of dollars of inherited wealth?"

Short-sighted much?

Odd are against the poor kid having the opportunity or Donald Trump. If that poor kids parents make good decisions, instill good behavior, and good education in that kid then HIS or Her Children very well might have the same opportunity as Donald Trump. Giant steps in wealth are possible but rare in this country.....although more likely than any other country in the world. Giant steps in wealth across 2 or 3 generations are very possible in this country.

It's not the fact that your opinions are so objectionable and often based on incorrect information, it's more the arrogance and condescension that you deliver them with that makes you so unlikable.

He’s not the only one that is guilty of that.

" It's not the fact that your opinions are so objectionable and often based on incorrect information, it's more the arrogance and condescension that you deliver them with that makes you so unlikable."

You nail it with the "objectionable", but then lose it when you attempt to rationalize away my arguments.

What I do is present air-tight, cogent arguments that logically support conclusions that you emotionally find objectionable, even repugnant.

The idea that taxation could be good, if used to encourage capital investment, and keep existing money actively circulating in the economy, rather than relying on unsustainable debt growth as has been happening since we adopted Reaganomics????

To a libertarian, that is COMPLETELY Repugnant of an idea. And yet, I clearly show it to be the case..... must... attack... the... messenger!

Am I arrogant and condescending? Undeniably so. But so is Trump.

So, what is the real reason you attack me? If I reaffirmed your beliefs instead of challenged them, would my arrogance be unlikable to you?