Hacker News Reader

Comment by wang_li | Hacker News Reader

(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...

View on HN

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.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com