Poll: How do rich people become rich in the first place?

[asinann]

Most rich people started that way. There are the rare ones that get lucky with an idea or that win the lottery, but most rich people come from rich families. Even Bill Gates came from a rich family (though he DID make most of it on his own.) Most of the rich families got rich through a means that is near impossible now: crime.

 

[asinann]

Its the rich that pay almost all of the taxes in the US

Actually, most of the income tax revenue comes from the rapidly shrinking middle class in the US. Sure the 1% people pay a larger amount each, but they only make up 1% of the population. When you stack a few thousand people paying a few million each (because it's taxed at 15% AND they write off things like trust funds to family members and donations to their churches) vs 150,000,000 people paying 10k each, the masses end up paying more overall.


I also don't see many small businesses hiring people. Where I'm from they tend to be places where the owner works 12 hours a day and barely scrapes by.

Most of the wealthy started there, were handed high paying jobs on silver platters, screwed them up, got another one ad nauseum while any idiot could have outdone them given the chance.

 

[spartan231490]

Well? Does anyone know? Ive heard that they just got lucky by winning a lottery or being successful in making business and stuff like that. But I dont really know. So.....I was just hoping if you guys can please explain to me? I know its too early to dream about that, but I plan on trying to become rich myself somehow.

most lotto winners or similar end up worse than they started in a few years. The vast majority of the rich inherit their money down long lines of succession.

 

[Alade]

Apparently the consensus of this forum is that money falls from trees.

I guarantee you not a single post in this thread said anything close to that. It's sad that you chose not to deal with posts here honestly.

I'm sorry to burst your bubble but while you can get rich by winning the lottery/getting extremely lucky with investments, that's pretty much the only way to earn money with pure luck.

You forgot being born into/marrying into money.

Actually getting rich is done through hard work, the more marbles you have in your damn head, the more the hard work will pay off.

As long as you have the resources to develop those marbles in your head, maybe.

Fair enough, I forgot being born into/marrying into money.

Also, you don't generally need to have a start off point (I'll admit that it helps), will and ambition can pave the road for such things. My favorite example would be the Benetton family, children of a humble bicycle shop owner, who went on to becomes some of the richest and most influential people in Italy, and the whole world.

 

[emeraldrafael]

Its the rich that pay almost all of the taxes in the US

Actually, most of the income tax revenue comes from the rapidly shrinking middle class in the US. Sure the 1% people pay a larger amount each, but they only make up 1% of the population. When you stack a few thousand people paying a few million each (because it's taxed at 15% AND they write off things like trust funds to family members and donations to their churches) vs 150,000,000 people paying 10k each, the masses end up paying more overall.


I also don't see many small businesses hiring people. Where I'm from they tend to be places where the owner works 12 hours a day and barely scrapes by.

Most of the wealthy started there, were handed high paying jobs on silver platters, screwed them up, got another one ad nauseum while any idiot could have outdone them given the chance.

that assuming they all pay taxes (big shock they dont). <url=http://money.msn.com/tax-tips/post.aspx?post=292d620a-6459-4381-a22b-f3b59dc64ff8>45% of the tax paying populace doesnt pay income tax (The one that gets raised and usually supports the Federal Budget's spending) for being in too low of a tax bracket or other loopholes to avoid taxes.

also, <url=http://www.ntu.org/tax-basics/who-pays-income-taxes.html>according to AGI for 2009, the top 75% (those making 100K+ which I would certainly say is wealthy, but hten again where I live the median tax payer) pays close to about 70.5%, the top 5% paying near 59% (well over majority).

According to <url=http://www.istockanalyst.com/finance/story/6142878/who-is-paying-the-largest-share-of-taxes>this story, those earning 200K+ pay over 50%.

<url=http://web.sba.gov/faqs/faqIndexAll.cfm?areaid=24>Small businesses also created about 65% of jobs in private sector up till 2009.

and of course I dont see many large businesses (500+ workers, as classifed by the SBA (small business association) hiring, or at least making the positive gain (new hiring > layoffs/firings), but thats just my area.

And contrary to most popular belief, not just any idiot can run a company when presented. please, feel free to pick up the nearest drifter or welfare abuser and place them in a CEO position of the Fortune 500 companies and tell me they can do better jobs. Tell me they could have prevented Enron, the financial and housing bubble pop, and the crippling debt congress is putting the nation through if we're going to just get straight to the point.

 

[Athefist]

There are loads of people in the same position as you, only they don't have family connections and so they're forced to put in 50 hours a week at McDonalds. At a dead-end position where they're forced to work long hours just to make enough to survive, but they have no hope of rising out of that position to something better.

Lots of people use low pay jobs to not only grind out hours for a paycheck, but also learn a skill. If you want to eventually run a McDonalds, by all means take a job there. If you just need a bit of cash while going to school, take a job there. If neither of those apply, don't take a job there. I could make small money slaving away as a plumbers apprentice, but at the end I'd hopefully be a plumber.

We're talking apples and oranges here really. The young guy who gets someone pregnant isn't a person driven towards success no matter what his background is. Being driven means you make sacrifices. You don't do much that isn't focused on achieving your goal. Driven people are constantly asking themselves "Is this activity propelling me in the direction I need to go?" if the answer is no, they drop it. On a personal level, I don't get paid much for the work I do. I have 4 roommates and really own very little. The trade off is my education is paid for and at the end of it I will be taking over portions of the business. If I didn't have the family connections, I could still have the 4 roommates, work a low end job to cover expenses and still intern at a place where I wanted to eventually end up.

 

[MeChaNiZ3D]

Generally a combination of entrepreneurship and other rich people.

 

[BringBackBuck]

Rich you say? If you are reading this on a computer, then you are almost certainly not shitting in a ditch and there's no cholera in your drinking water, then you're doing OK by world standards too. Hi five's all round.

Let's have a go at defining "rich":

Nearly a billion people don't have access to clean drinking water

Two and half billion people are still without access to improved sanitation including over 1 billion who have no facilities at all and are forced to engage in the hazardous and demeaning practice of open defecation - *http://www.unicef.org/wash/index_statistics.html#sthash.v1ADZPvI.dpuf

only $2,161 is needed in order to belong to the top half of the world wealth distribution, but to be a member of the top 10 per cent required at least $61,000 and membership of the top 1 per cent required more than $500,000 per adult. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_inequality

Let's go with the elite 10% of the world's wealthy and say $61,000 in net worth makes you rich.

So I guess that makes me rich. How did I get there? Well I was lucky enough to not be born in Sub-saharan Africa or the slums of Mumbai, so luck clearly plays a part. The rest is hard work and making lots of good financially sound decisions.

In my opinion it is absolutely possible to become rich through a good work ethic and making good decisions (well in this country anyway.

 

[Nieroshai]

Luck. Nobody gets rich without some kind of fluke, be it winning the lottery, or having rich parents, or being born in a time where the skill that made them rich is valuable.

Oh, the value of a skill? The concept that people will gladly pay for certain talents, goods, and services? Totally a fluke! But only in the manner that everything is a fluke because something could always go wrong and nothing is guaranteed.

Also, OP, poll is borked

 

[hazabaza1]

Luck, charm, and a fair bit of dick suckin'.

 

[Nieroshai]

Rich you say? If you are reading this on a computer, then you are almost certainly not shitting in a ditch and there's no cholera in your drinking water, then you're doing OK by world standards too. Hi five's all round.

Let's have a go at defining "rich":

Nearly a billion people don't have access to clean drinking water

Two and half billion people are still without access to improved sanitation including over 1 billion who have no facilities at all and are forced to engage in the hazardous and demeaning practice of open defecation - *http://www.unicef.org/wash/index_statistics.html#sthash.v1ADZPvI.dpuf

only $2,161 is needed in order to belong to the top half of the world wealth distribution, but to be a member of the top 10 per cent required at least $61,000 and membership of the top 1 per cent required more than $500,000 per adult. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_inequality

Let's go with the elite 10% of the world's wealthy and say $61,000 in net worth makes you rich.

So I guess that makes me rich. How did I get there? Well I was lucky enough to not be born in Sub-saharan Africa or the slums of Mumbai, so luck clearly plays a part. The rest is hard work and making lots of good financially sound decisions.

In my opinion it is absolutely possible to become rich through a good work ethic and making good decisions (well in this country anyway.

Valid points, but talking down to everyone here when you yourself are using a computer is uncalled for. You do point that out though, so I don't know where I'm going with this.

Oh that's where (OT): Region has less to do with economic poverty in many regions compared to the political maneuvering of despots who force their countries to produce but take all the fruits of that labor for themselves. Many of the poorest nations of the world function on the backs of oppressed, uneducated villagers while rich "Generals" or "Admirals" chomp cigars and send children to die. Their plight is not inability to produce, or some nebulous "unfairness" due to other countries having more, but the inability to save themselves from tyranny that won't let them have any.

I find it funny that people actually think punishing the Rich of free countries will help the impoverished of the world. All the money in the free world can be thrown at uplifting those countries, and none of it would reach the people. Even more important is that, like in prosperous nations, they can reap what they sow instead of feeding it directly into the Machine.

There are likely exceptions, so I would like to say I do NOT mean to disrespect all impoverished nations and peoples who are where they are due to region, past wars, lack of resources, climate issues, etc.

 

[DefunctTheory]

Got to love all the unsubstantiated hate going around this thread. Jealousy is a powerfully blinding emotion.

Uhm, I' sorry, but "You're all just jealous" is nothing but a cop-out, you know. You don't even know it to be true, so I'm going to call stones and glass houses on the subject of "blinding emotions".

If you look at the Forbes billionaire list, a huge portion of it is self made money.

Not so sure for millionaires though.

 

[Dryk]

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.

The US especially, since they have one of the lowest social mobilities in the western world

 

[GonvilleBromhead]

There are many ways to break into being wealthy - luck, inheritance (though this is declining), talent, spotting an opportunity, or being very good at an in demand job (for example, about 5% of those in the UK earner over a million pounds a year are footballers. Once you add on actors and actresses, celebrities, radio presenters, TV hosts, etc...those who derive million pound incomes from sources that are fairly open to all backgrounds will be pretty sizable). Once you've got rich, canny investments turn the rich to super rich - once you have a lot of money it becomes very easy to make more.

Not that it really matters - be happy in your life; after all, wealth rarely impacts any else negatively, jealousy is not a particularly positive emotion, and ones happiness remains fairly standard depending on your personal "normal" living standards.

 

[Vegosiux]

Got to love all the unsubstantiated hate going around this thread. Jealousy is a powerfully blinding emotion.

Uhm, I' sorry, but "You're all just jealous" is nothing but a cop-out, you know. You don't even know it to be true, so I'm going to call stones and glass houses on the subject of "blinding emotions".

If you look at the Forbes billionaire list, a huge portion of it is self made money.

Not so sure for millionaires though.

"Self-made" as in, started from nothing and made it big on their own, with their own hard work, completely independent of circumstance? Because that's kind of what I understand "self-made" to mean, something that's 100% your own effort.

 

[ShindoL Shill]

Probably luck. Making good investments, being hired by the right company in the right time period, they had the right parents...
Look at this list. [http://www.forbes.com/billionaires/list/] Lots of people in technological companies, as well as supermarkets and big industries. In short, they were lucky enough to start, or get high-up positions in, companies who did well in their industry.