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Comment by nugget | Hacker News Reader

> Going from $0 to $1M is almost impossible--going from $1M to $2M is almost inevitable.

I know plenty of people who inherited money and blew it all.

Very, very few people, even children from ''rich'' families, have an ''infinite money cushion''.

People who come from poverty or communities rampant with discrimination often times have to work harder for opportunities. But hard work is hard work, and there is fierce competition at every level, no matter who you are. I hesitate to take anything away from anyone's success.

And if you think making your first million from scratch is ''almost impossible'' you should look around any suburb of Silicon Valley at the many, many immigrants who came here with nothing and have saved up that amount, or more. Lots of luck, to be sure, but lots of planning, discipline, deferred gratification, and hard work too.

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Most of the successful immigrants I personally know who have made it in silicon valley came from families with money or power back home.

I mean, there are other stories to, of course, but the student visa and then technical visa course is one mostly reserved for people who come from well off families.

(I am not trying to knock anyone or diminish their achievements, some of these people have worked hard and achieved a lot. I am just saying that if you can get a student visa or a technical work visa, you probably did not come from a poor or powerless family.)

(0% of families dissipate their wealth within three generations. This suggests that there is a constant up welling of people who accumulate wealth. The proposition that there is some fixed group of rich people sitting at the top is absurd.

http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB100014241278873246624045783346...

Edit: the actual figure is 90%

For other people struggling to read this comment: "(" is on the same key as "5" on Azerty keyboards.

It's also a capital 9. I'm so ashamed. The number is supposedly 90%.

Oh, my bad, I got confused with the brackets (which are not on a digit key). I really should have checked. See, we all make mistakes!

Did you know you can edit your post? I think yours deserve it.

It appears that after a certain amount of time the edit capability is unavailable.

There is a force not unlike gravity, constantly pulling on all outliers, reverting them to the mean over time. However, that does not imply the outliers do not "sit at the top" and heavily impact whatever group in which they are the outliers.

There are many exceptions http://blogs.wsj.com/economics/2016/05/19/the-wealthy-in-flo...

The median inheritance is $50k. Is it possible that very large inheritances are more likely to keep accumulating?

The Chinese proverb for this is 富不過三代 which literally means "wealth does not pass three generations". It's allegedly ancient.

I didn't read that as "if you have $1M you'll almost certainly go to $2M", so much as "if your business has already earned $1M in profit then it's almost certain to continue to earn another $1M in profit". And likewise, it's not talking about having $1M in savings from a lifetime of hard work.

Think of a business as being like an engine. Until you get the engine started and running under its own power, it's just costing you time and effort and money. Once it's running, it generates money at an accelerating rate. The $1M cutoff here is a proxy for "the engine is running."

If they're talking like the person that was described was talking, I absolutely would take away from their success, especially because they've never had to worry about any of the stuff that someone who doesn't come from means has to worry about.

Don't get me wrong; finding success is hard, and whenever someone does find it, it should be celebrated. But those that do find it shouldn't discount the struggles of those who aren't able to try, especially if it takes them several tried to find it themselves.

>I absolutely would take away from their success

Why? Because they are an asshole about it? That doesn't reduce their success in any way. If they have offset the losses of their previous endeavors, they have provided a net gain and it's still a success.

Because they're an asshole about it, and because they're ignoring the pure luck advantages they had which made their success possible. And it doesn't matter if they've offset the losses of their previous tries, they still took multiple tries (in and of itself not a problem), which is something most people don't get.

Let me ask a question - what does your attitude benefit you? It seems mostly to make you bitter about things that were never in your control, which seems like an unvarnished negative. Maybe you've found something more helpful.

I don't think many people have an attitude of "we need to recognize built-in advantages, and should call out people who try to play down or hide them" to benefit themselves - it's an attitude and position adopted to try to benefit those without those advantages. E.g. by showing a beneficial side of certain social safety net policies, or the downside of the default position becoming graduating with massive amounts of student debt, etc.

I'm not bitter, I just think that guy is an asshole.

With that attitude, nobody could ever take any credit for success because there is someone else that had it harder.

"Warren Buffet didn't do anything impressive because he grew up with his parents."

What a petty way to live.

Warren Buffet doesn't discourage and shit on those who haven't been able to do what he has. Again, I would discount the person's success because they're an asshole, and refusing to acknowledge that they were given many privileges and benefits by pure random luck. Buffet routinely acknowledges that he had lots of help getting to where he is today.

thats both a false dichotomy and a strawman.

Well played

Because a lot of humanity wants to shit on others' successes. It's why it's mostly futile to seek outward validation.

85% of American millionaires are self-made. Source: "The Millionaire Next Door" book.

That's exactly what OP is trying to point out. It's easy to be "self-made" when you can get a million dollar loan from your dad to get your real-estate business off the ground. It's easy to be self-made when your dad works at Seattle's most prestigious law firm and can arrange an introduction with IBM's PC hardware division. It's significantly more difficult to be self-made when you have no connections and no capital.

I don't understand. none of those examples are 'self-made'

That's the point. They're saying that those 85% of self-made American millionaires aren't as "self-made" as they claim.

Like me: I could talk about starting with almost nothing in my bank accounts, getting a job, working through the ranks, buying a home, and working toward my first million... conveniently leaving out all the advantages that I've had to get me to this point (cultural expectation that I'd go to college instilled in me from a young age, a family well-off enough to support that financially, uninterrupted time to work on the hobbies that grew into a career, etc).

Quanticle seems to be relating the origins of Donald Trump and Bill Gates. Donald describes his fortune as self-made. Bill Gates has been described as self-made. It's true, if you only consider that their wealth is much greater than any gift they've ever received. It's false from the perspective that anyone could do it with enough hard work.

Honestly no one is self-made. People who don't have financial cushions still rely on others to back their idea and hard work.

Problem is everyone on HN is talking about how to make millions when that's backwards mentality because then you'll never be satisfied. People need to strive for modest salaries and things that benefit society and the planet not filling one's pockets.

> People need to strive for modest salaries and things that benefit society and the planet not filling one's pockets.

It's a lot easier to do projects that benefit society and the planet if you have millions in your pocket that you can spend/invest on them (say for paying employees or simply having financial runway).

There is some truth in what parent is saying though. We have reach a point in the West were a comfortable life is basically possible for everyone. However, we still have the bullish culture from after the war that paints a guy that want a simple life as some sort of loser.

So we go on holiday and marvel at the simple life of artisans, farmer or other, but we teach our children that such a lifestyle is a failure.

Everybody who thinks that their salary is too large is free to donate a large(r) part of the salary to things that he cares of. So if you think you earn a more modest salary, do so. The problem is that most people who talk of "more modest salaries" mean "others should have more modest salaries". Better call this envy.

> So we go on holiday and marvel at the simple life of artisans, farmer or other.

I surely don't.

> We have reach a point in the West were a comfortable life is basically possible for everyone. However, we still have the bullish culture from after the war that paints a guy that want a simple life as some sort of loser.

And what made it possible that leading a comfortable life is basically possible for everyone? Surely not the people who want a simple life.

I can accept that technology has become too complicated for most people to grasp. I am among the first to accept this as a problem. But if this is your opinion, start to develop technology that is easier to grasp instead of complaining how complicated anything has become. The same holds for laws, too.

> And what made it possible that leading a comfortable life is basically possible for everyone? Surely not the people who want a simple life.

But is pushing everyone to push the boundaries even if they are not driven or motivated not counterproductive at some point ?

Well I may be biased by living in London and working in the financial industry, where personal enrichment seems to be the only accepted way of life. But all the scheming that is done to be on top is definitively keeping competent people out of the loop. Keeping your job is a more valuable skill that excelling at your job, and you don't need much corporate experience to know that there is a very thin overlap between the 2. I see people that are great with children, amazing artists, ... that are just grinding at their job just to keep living a life where they can afford the socially acceptable brand of car, clothes and activities, but dream of the day when they can spend more than a few hours a month doing what they are really good at.

More generally, what about all the support jobs ? Tech is very far away to replace teacher or nurses. Those jobs are loser jobs in a world that only value "potentially world changing career". You are more likely to become a millionaire as a random Goldman Sachs cannon fodder as you are as a nurse. What kind of criminal parent would encourage their kid to teach instead of getting a degree that let them into finance ?

These are two insightful and underrated points. I'm going to store them away somewhere if you don't mind. Have an up vote!

> Keeping your job is a more valuable skill that excelling at your job, and you don't need much corporate experience to know that there is a very thin overlap between the 2.

This is true in most companies, not just finance. The fact that these 2 activities are orthogonal and require entirely different skill sets is one of the more frustrating aspects of corporate life, giving rise to: very talented people who end up grinding away as drone#19221 because they aren't great at "managing upward" and smooth talkers who BS their way into higher and higher roles.

> I see people that are great with children, amazing artists, ... that are just grinding at their job just to keep living a life where they can afford the socially acceptable brand of car, clothes and activities, but dream of the day when they can spend more than a few hours a month doing what they are really good at.

Again, welcome to work everywhere. For most people, a job is the thing you do for money so you can live, and save up to finally do what you are good at or love when you're old and retired.

> People need to strive for modest salaries

So true. In today's US economy just simply having a salary, period, is something one must strive for. Continuity and regularity of compensation has become difficult to obtain.

We wouldn't have nice things like computers, coffee, indoor plumbing, jeans, books, teeth, etc. if people were satisfied with modest salaries and not filling their pockets.

Yes we would. Long before capitalism was invented the great creators of the world made great strides with inventiveness. While necessity is certainly the mother of invention, there's no limit to human curiosity.

Examples: Arabic numerals, Da Vinci, Mozart, Galileo, Maxwell, Einstein, Turing, etc. That's where a lot of those modern things come from.

Then along comes the capitalists to exploit the true discoveries for personal gain. Mass produce this-and-that, destroy the environment, etc. Build atomic bombs.

I'm curious about when you believe capitalism was "invented". Post-Einstein?

What's your definition of self-made? I like "Someone with significant wealth who didn't receive inheritance or trust fund money."

Someone with significant wealth who reached 18 without any cash/value other than what he earned himself. Meaning self-funded university studies, pretty hard in US from what I heard. Would earn great respect not only from me.

In more lenient fashion, somebody on top of this who finished university without debt, and no money apart from self-earned.

If you are born in the Western World, it is like starting a marathon 5 km away from the finish line and still be in the same race than the one starting at the beginning.

When you start thinking everything you get for free, even just in a lower middle western family, compared to someone born in a war torn village in Africa, the concept of "self-made" becomes really meaningless.

That's why a stable government that protects life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness is necessary. The opportunity flows from that.

But they're still usually counted as such. Both Donald Trump and Bill Gates are regularly touted as "self-made" Xillionaires. And, at least in terms of that book, we don't know what definition of self made is used, or how they counted it.

In US, 'self-make' means 'privileged'

Gates was already a multimillionaire from Microsoft before the DOS deal. IBM also went to Gary Kildall first.

Bill Gates was probably a multimillionaire from the day he was conceived.

No need to guess. Biographies of Gates and Microsoft are plentiful.

The point is that most folks that "make it" have some advantages from the start. Their parents might not have been rich, but decently well off. Went to decent schools, were able to make business contacts and network. Might not have had to work while in school either. If their business failed, it didn't mean they were sleeping on people's couches: They had a room at their parents if it got that bad, but they could usually weather the storm.

Again, contacts help with that.

The folks growing up in poverty don't have much of that. Schools are by chance, and often folks work through college so there isn't as much time for networking. Besides, networking costs money. If this person fails, they are simply homeless.

Simply moving up to lower middle class takes some work.

Sure, they are possibly "self-made", but they weren't fighting lack of opportunity.It is simply easier to make it if you have a good foundation.

Read this book if you want the sources, they are cited there and are too many to list here.

Wheres the ACTUAL study? Or did the author just call up 5 rich dudes?

Seriously are we taking this number as legitimate.. simply because it comes from a BOOK?

Is that how low our scientific standards have become?

Frickin Pixar verified that talking cars exist. Good enough for me!

The book describes the studies they used. (Correction, it's 80%. I had misremembered it.) You can get the book for $2.50 from Amazon, not a bad investment if you are interested in the topic.

The numbers are not correct or even science.

Its one dude who uses that number to sell his pop psychology book.

Heres a blog from the author about where he gets his numbers:

'In my thirty plus years of surveying and studying millionaires'

http://www.thomasjstanley.com/2014/05/america-where-milliona...

A blog post of a couple of paragraphs does not give any information about the rigor, correctness, or value of the contents of a book.

85% of wizards are educated at Hogwarts. "Harry Potter" book.

Hogwarts isn't even the largest school, that'd be Uagadou.

Woah I didnt know there were other schools and the world was so rich. Thats cool. My numbers were incorrect.

I hope theres more of a fleshing out of the harry potter world in future books or movies.

An mmo would be pretty tight lol.

well... He/she clearly said that:

p(success|rich) > p(success|poor)

and never implied that:

p(success|rich) = 1

>People who come from poverty or communities rampant with discrimination often times have to work harder for opportunities. But hard work is hard work, and there is fierce competition at every level, no matter who you are. I hesitate to take anything away from anyone's success.

Tell that to the kid making iPhones in the Foxconn facility. Success isn't where you are, it's how far you've come. By that metric the most successful thing you can do in life is have a father like Sam Walton.

Hard work is requisite, not satisfactory. You can dig ditches in your own yard for 14 hours a day and you aren't going to be successful. Similarly, you can start a business with your $1 million inherited wealth, but it has an extremely high probability of failing without hard work.

>Tell that to the kid making iPhones in the Foxconn facility.

I'm not even sure what your point is. GP was pointing out that competition at every level is fierce. Not sure what that has to do with the Foxconn employee. Are they known for not being competitive?

>Hard work is requisite, not satisfactory.

If you're one of the Rich Kids of Instagram, hard work doesn't seem to play much of a role in their lives.

The point about Foxconn is obvious. How many Foxconn employees have a realistic chance of topping the rich list?

Hard work, like the idea of being a self-made person, is largely a self-serving mythology.

Real hard work is doing the same shitty job for 10-12 hours a day six or seven days a week and earning barely enough to pay the rent.

That's the reality of hard work for much of the population. Fetishising the hard work of the already-rich discounts that ground truth.

> Tell that to the kid making iPhones in the Foxconn facility.

The kid in the Foxconn facility is better off if he works there than if he did not have any job. If it were otherwise he would quit the job (since the kid is a poor worker, but not a slave). So indeed having a job at Foxconn lead to a better (though still bad) life for the kid. The kid should rather complain at his parents that they, as poor people, gave life to him - they should know that because of their poverty he would lead a miserable life and hazarded the consequences.

It depends on where one lives. Where I currently live, it takes about $25M in wealth just to get out of middle class and into lower upper class. And, to get into the true upper class requires maybe $500M to a billion. And, at that level, it is effectively infinite money (like > $250k a day in passive income, at the lowest level).

-4 in less than 30 minutes. that's a record for me. I must have said something controversial. So, glad that I could help :-)

I'm not aware of any place on earth where someone who has $24 million in wealth is considered 'middle class'.

That's $180,000 annually at a measly 0.75% interest (what my peon savings bank currently gives) for doing absolutely nothing. If you can quit your job and ride on 180k passive, risk-free income, you're not middle class.

> That's $180,000 annually at a measly 0.75% interest

Actually that 0.75 is negative in real terms (after taking off inflation currently 1.1% - not to mention taxation). A person drawing $180k would be burning their capital.

You're not alone - trust me. Most people don't believe me.

But, then, I grew up in a place where many if not most household incomes are less than $15k / year.

It's all relative though - I have enough saved up to probably live as a rich man in probably 99% of the earth. Yet, I keep pushing myself to get into the upper class of a minuscule area of the world. It's kind of screwed up.

Sorry, I should have been stricter with my phrasing.

There is no place on earth where you can consider yourself middle class only having $24m in net worth. What you are referring to is likely a small community filled with people with net worths above $100m, but that doesn't change the class level because of what I pointed out. If you can quit your job and make 6 figures off of interest, you are not middle class anymore wherever you live.

Just because you can't afford a penthouse apartment in downtown Manhattan doesn't mean you are middle class.

Places such as the UK have a socio-economic class system where class really has rather little to do with money - upper class here means aristocracy not just rich. Money really doesn't have that much to do with it.

I get what you're saying - but the reality is that globalization is to blame. Years ago, if one was born ambitious and able, with enough luck they'd get relatively 'rich' and most likely stop when they hit that point. Nowadays, the same type of person has to accumulate a much larger amount to feel any satisfaction. And, it doesn't help that those with wealth have clustered together.

Can you give us a hint as to where this place is? I believe that you believe this, and it may be true, but the rest of us are having a hard time figuring out where this place is that the upper class is half a billion dollars, and tens of millions only makes you middle class. Again, within a city or perhaps some particularly small but remarkably wealthy country, maybe. But which one?

You're not alone - trust me. Most people don't believe me.

It might help if you actually stated where you live. As it stands, you're talking about your girlfriend who "goes to a different school". Which school, and what's her name?

I can't reply to ap22213 for some reason, but I agree with everyone else - people are not middle class in Loudon County unless they have more than 25 million. That's clearly wrong, you don't understand what middle class means. Your next door neighbors might all have a billion, and your 15 million feels like not much, but that doesn't make you middle class, you are still rich.

In Seattle, there's this area where a bunch of billionaires live on Lake Washington. If you live next door in your 5 million dollar house to bill gates, that doesn't make you middle class. It just makes you poorer than he is.

Loudoun county, which is ranked as the highest income county in the US.

According to this, middle class in Loudoun county is ~$150K household income.

http://www.loudountimes.com/news/article/the_loudouns_at_122...

Looking at Zillow, it's cheaper than where I live (Boulder, CO).

Thank you for clarifying. Virginia, and not Tennessee, I take it. What that means is that few, if any, in Loudon County, VA are middle-class. It does not mean that you need $25 million to be middle-class in Loudon County. It means you need to be rich to live in Loudon County.

I've lived in Loudoun county, VA. Your characterization of middle class in that place is totally inaccurate. There are probably less than 50 square miles on earth (if that) where a net worth of $24MM places you in the middle class.

Well then you'd know that Loudoun is a large county. I'm sure you lived in the eastern part - probably ashburn where they build dense complexes of 450k townhouses that span as far as the eye can see - to house all the 'creative class' workers who make 100k a year and feel good about themselves.

If you're earning over $180k (which you would on the interest of $24mm), you'd be in the top 0.2% of earners for Loudoun County.

That's not middle class at all.

That seems really off, considering that the top 1% (down with the 1%, etc.) make at least $428k nationwide.[1] Where are you getting the information?

[1]: http://www.kiplinger.com/article/taxes/T054-C000-S001-what-s...

I got it from here [0].

I just rechecked my numbers, and it turns out I was reading from the wrong column, earning >$180,000 a year would put you in the top 2.7%

https://datausa.io/profile/geo/loudoun-county-va/#income_dis...

LOL - of course many of you just seem to want to rebuke me. Makes sense, given today's culture. But, you're just adding to the problem.

Most current problems in our society stem from people getting more satisfaction out of pushing web buttons than doing real things out in the real world.

Oh, well, sucks to be many of you but I guess really good to be me. It's just really sad. Especially sad given how poor I grew up.

It's sad that you have been sucked into a life of such competitive materialism that you can't find satisfaction with a net worth less than 25m. If you grew up poor and have 20m now and are still not satisfied, there is likely no number that will ever satisfy you.

Is the $25M in US dollars? If so, that seems like plenty to be upper class in any place I'm aware of. For example, at 4% return on investment, that'd yield $1M US annually. 500K would be enough money to, e.g., rent two rooms at the Mayfair Hotel in London, or the Contemporary Hotel at Disneyland for the year and eat out every night. Maybe you live in a place more rarefied than Mayfair or Disneyland, but there aren't many of those places, so your experiences may not be typical.

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