That would work, exceptBurnedOutMyEyes said:
I guess I'd better get modding.
Poll: How do rich people become rich in the first place?
- Thread starter Bamba
- Start date
I guess I'd better get modding.
I imagine a few of them worked super hard for a really long time, a few of them were at the right place at the right time, a few of them saw an opportunity before most others did and took a risk to pursue that opportunity, and a few just got it from their rich parents.
Like when asking "how do the poor become poor," you're likely to get a huge range of answers.
Like when asking "how do the poor become poor," you're likely to get a huge range of answers.
Hey, at least of all the groups of people who have been the subject of unsubstantiated hate, the rich are doing well enough to generally shrug off that hate!Heronblade said:
[citation needed]Lee Quitt said:
[citation needed]
[citaion needed]
Really, if you're going to be telling people they're wrong, you better have something more than just your own word going for it.
Even more so if you're going to claim that circumstance plays no part in it.
Naw, on that one, the answer is more often than not simply that they never were rich in the first place.dyre said:
Okay I'm bored of listening to people say that luck doesn't count here are some numbers.
Number of millionaires, 10,000,000 (in dollars U.S.)
number of people, 7,100,000,000
chance of being millionaire 0.14%
So from this we can conclude that only 1 person in 714 works hard... ¬_¬
SOURCES
http://www.worldometers.info/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Millionaire
Number of millionaires, 10,000,000 (in dollars U.S.)
number of people, 7,100,000,000
chance of being millionaire 0.14%
So from this we can conclude that only 1 person in 714 works hard... ¬_¬
SOURCES
http://www.worldometers.info/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Millionaire
Seeing how social economics and opportunities vary across the globe I'd say that statistic doesn't paint an accurate picture.Potato Dragon said:
Maybe break it up into regions?
If its getting rich from nothing then its probably a combination of hard work and saving every dollar,carefull and steady property acquisition,also investing non essential money in stocks,which would involve having your money in the right place at the right time,ie,luck.
And the quantity of total snobs is rather hilarious.Lee Quitt said:
OT:
Many inherit.
Many get it by pure luck, like the lottery.
Most have a combination of natural skill, strong will, good ideas at the right time and a factor of luck.
Anyone who says there is no luck, innate skill or timing involved is a moron. There are people in this world who have made more sacrifices and worked longer and harder than the like of Bill Gates can possibly imagine and they have nothing or little to show for it.
What everyone else says - luck. Of course you can start with it by being born with it or winning the lottery (which odds are you won't so don't bother).
The reason luck is truly relative is because either the skill they have is sought after or what's more likely is they got into a higher more well paid position in a business because someone needed replacing. Sure maybe the hard work they did paid off so they got that promotion over someone else, but they still needed luck to get the original job over all the other candidates, as well actually being in the right time and place to get a stab at the promotion.
In short, it's a LOT of luck + Hard-work that will 99/100 never pay off.
The reason luck is truly relative is because either the skill they have is sought after or what's more likely is they got into a higher more well paid position in a business because someone needed replacing. Sure maybe the hard work they did paid off so they got that promotion over someone else, but they still needed luck to get the original job over all the other candidates, as well actually being in the right time and place to get a stab at the promotion.
In short, it's a LOT of luck + Hard-work that will 99/100 never pay off.
OkayMeatspinner said:
North America 0.62%
Europe 0.41%
Asia-Pacific 0.06%
Middle east 0.10%
Africa 0.01%
Poor wording on my part but my main point is even if hard work and talent are a contributing factor luck will most likely have played the largest part.LetalisK said:
Maybe it's just because I live in Australia - home to the Packer, Rinehart and Murdoch empires - but that is not necessarily true. Kerry Packer's casinos went to his son, about 20% of News Ltd.'s shares (a large enough portion to control the business) are never going to leave the hands of the Murdoch family, and Gina Rinehart inherited her mining business from her father, Lang Hancock (and is refusing the acknowledge the vesting date of the family trust set up by him in respect of her own children, apparently without any sense of irony.)Heronblade said:
You can be crazy smart and work your ass off for forty years and never break an average salary, because you didn't make enough friends to get promoted or because you just never got noticed by the right people. Or, you can inherit your dad's mining company and then stumble across a nationwide mining boom that makes you the richest woman in the country while working no harder than anyone employed by your now-massive corporate empire.
Everyone who says "luck" is half right.
It depends where the lucrative passive income is. Right now, it's real estate. You can get money from owning a successful and profitable business, you can get it by owning and renting out property (right now, this is the best way), you can work a very high-paying job (like the oil rigs in Alberta), you can make all the right investments/stock market decisions, or you can get a windfall.
There's always an undercurrent of luck, but it's not nearly as integral as people say it is (except in the stock market, that's very luck based, no matter what stock market tycoons say, or in getting a windfall).
People who say "inherit or luck only" are just incredibly cynical and/or don't actually comprehend how money flows.
It depends where the lucrative passive income is. Right now, it's real estate. You can get money from owning a successful and profitable business, you can get it by owning and renting out property (right now, this is the best way), you can work a very high-paying job (like the oil rigs in Alberta), you can make all the right investments/stock market decisions, or you can get a windfall.
There's always an undercurrent of luck, but it's not nearly as integral as people say it is (except in the stock market, that's very luck based, no matter what stock market tycoons say, or in getting a windfall).
People who say "inherit or luck only" are just incredibly cynical and/or don't actually comprehend how money flows.
I will totally second this. I still respect a middle-aged man who inherited his fortune, because it's actually incredibly easy to lose it all if you don't know what to do with it. There's not a single genuinely rich person out there who isn't worth studying, asking questions about, or talking to about money.Tony said:
A person can get lucky and inherit a fortune, or they can spin their wheels forever without making significant progress in spite of ability and dedication. I'm not denying that both of those scenarios occur, all too often in both cases. I am however saying that those who made their own fortune actually did WORK to earn it, and that the people in the "self made" category outnumber those in the "ungodly lucky" category.bastardofmelbourne said:
Specifically from inheritance, yes, but those who are in rich families have greater opportunity to make money than others. They have access to better education, better health care, etc. and have the benefit of their family's connections (which rich people tend to have). Wealth is a consequence of opportunity. Sure, a person in a rich family will not be rich if they ignore their many opportunities, but a poor person will, in almost all cases, never see opportunity and will stay poor.Heronblade said:
Mkaing something everybody wants and doing it better than the other guy... also it's about who you know, so charisma.
He actually mixed all three. Far from starting with a broken computer someone threw out, he went to Harvard on a trust fund and did nothing productive aside from dicking around with the computers. No plan of study, no major, nothing. He wound up dropping out -- of Harvard, on a trust fund -- to start Microsoft. He obviously built on the fortune to an absurd degree, but his family was rich enough to begin with to send him to an ivy league school just for the hell of it. That's right, Bill Gates was a trust fund baby -- rich to begin with, super rich today. It's still an impressive story, but it's not at all the rags to riches story people tend to think it is.AnarchistFish said:
And that's basically how it happens. That combination of hard work and luck does work, but typically only if you've got a leg up already. The super rich are typically born upper middle class at the lowest, and more often than not are born rich and just manage to get richer. Reason being, the kind of positions that pay enough to get you up into that realm of stratospheric wealth tend to require a college education, which costs a lot of money. Scholarships exist for those who can't afford school, but let's be honest here -- they only really help the middle class. The truly poor are too worried about putting food on the table to do well enough in secondary school to qualify for college scholarships. The rare situations that don't require a college education tend to involve emerging fields, and happen to one or two people a century. In other words, not often at all, and more often than not, it's someone like Bill Gates who manages to fill the niche -- someone whose family was well off enough to begin with to give him the time needed to tinker with whatever new technology is about to make him rich.
That's the case in the USA. Up here in Canada, your "better education and health care" points are moot, and connections in ANY country can be made by someone who is just friendly. I actually managed to impress the head of Bioware in my grocery store job, and he said that he would totally hire me on the spot if I applied to Bioware with a good resume. That's a hell of a connection that I could have had if I had gone and applied in a couple of days (and possibly the one thing that's made the most people call me a damned liar, but I SWEAR it happened), but I didn't have the qualifications at the time. Shoot.theemporer said:
Connections can be made by anyone who figures out where the people to connect with are.
And as for poor people never seeing opportunity, well. I'M poor (I'm in school to remedy that), but I'm in the middle of a job that not only gives me shelter for four weeks, but pays me pretty well for the effort I have to put in (caretaker), I've joined an optional class that has a 98% rate of landing students meaningful and decent-paying jobs over the summer, and I've repaired computers for a few people, all of which is combining to make me less poor. A poor friend of mine is busy programming and designing sites and basic programs for his university to supplement his meager income. Meanwhile, my other poor friends are out drinking their guts out right around now.
Does it surprise you that there's not a big chance they'll get ahead? You have to act on the opportunities going by for them to benefit you. I know this is all anecdotal, but I see a lot of people who say "I never get opportunities", and then don't do anything proactive outside of school. To which I think "Well, if you're not planning on supplementing your resume with that programming job in our program's project club, then I'LL take that, thank you!"