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Comment by bitbuilder | Hacker News Reader

Doesn't your Paris Hilton example prove GPs point, rather than refute it? It's precisely due to her family's considerable wealth that she was able to make more than she'll inherit. Would Julia Louis-Dreyfus have been able to pursue an acting career so easily without family wealth? But I'm not sure it's even useful to consider celebrities when discussing wealth acquisition in our country. I'd consider them outliers, in the grand scheme of things.

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She is definitely an outlier. I would venture to guess that the success rate of trust fund babies in business is about on par with the success rate of inner city kids. They both lack the proper incentives to succeed, but in dramatically different ways.

That's just ridiculous. Inner city kids don't lack the proper incentives to succeed (they're poor, after all), they lack the resources needed to succeed.

Is IQ a resource?

I grew up poor in the south. People don't need to be handed incentives to succeed. Some people don't mind being poor. Some people will be poor before long even if you give them a million dollars. If success is important to you, you work for it. Success is defined differently for all of us. Lifelong welfare is not helping someone, it is not incentivizing them. That has to some from within.

I think he meant to say that trust fund kids lack motivation while inner city kids lack the skills.

Exactly. I don't know which is worse..

I do.

Being a trust fund baby.

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