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Comment by wskinner | Hacker News Reader

Not sure why you're getting downvoted. This is a totally valid point. For the downvoters: malchow's claim is that in the US, rich people are more likely to be businessmen or people who have otherwise worked for their wealth, rather than simply having been born to the right parents.

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Grandparent is asserting a fact (that the US rich are probably the most historically meritous group of wealth individuals in history). It is not an intuitive fact, and it isn't presented with evidence.

There are two big issues:

* It is very hard to gut-feel wealth distribution (eg, http://marketrealist.com/2013/10/shutdown-101-perceived-weal...). Identifying who the US rich requires more study of statistics than most people have time for - so this assertion is about a group that is difficult to identify. If most of the US rich were in fact living quietly on family wealth from a generation ago, how would this be identified? How do we verify that these 'rich people' are indeed meritorious? They might not be.

* All of history is a very long time. Although the US is technologically the most advanced nation we have ever seen, to claim that it rewards the meritous more than any nation in history is probably wrong, and suggests grandparent isn't making a point based on careful thought. We have had democracy for more than 2,000 years, the US has only been around for ~300.

That's true, but won't that apply to Liu Zhongtian (the billionaire in question) too? He probably didn't start out rich, and even if he earned his wealth from this grey-area arbitrage, many rich people in the US do that too.

I agree with what you're saying, but at the same time it's a hell of a lot easier to end up a wealthy adult if you come from a wealthy family. "Small" loans from family etc.

Roughly 80% of American millionaires are the first generation of their families to be wealthy. Here's the surprising part - most of them get there by working hard and spending less money than they earn...

[1] https://www.nytimes.com/books/first/s/stanley-millionaire.ht...

I like your link, but I couldn't find that particular statistic within it. Could you clarify?

Most of the studies I've seen reach the opposite conclusion, that parental lifetime income highly predicts the income of their children. For example, a child of parents in the 90th percentile has an expected income of over $100K, while a child of parents in the 10th percentile has an expected income of less than $40K.

http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2015/07/america-... (which comes from http://inequality.stanford.edu/sites/default/files/economic_...)

Income isn't wealth, but I'd be surprised if the correlation isn't strong. What percentage of individuals in the US of 90th percent household wealth came from families in the top half versus bottom half growing up? I don't know off hand, but if I had to bet blindly on outcomes I'd strongly favor betting on the individual who started out better off.

Perhaps one could go off and have a look at the list of the richest people in the US, note how many of them are named Mars or Walton, then return here and realize that this theory, while hardly impossible, requires more evidence than mere assertion.

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