> The ones who make the money tend to be workaholics.
Citation needed.
> You can afford it, sure, but you'll lose pots 'o money that way.
Which misses the point, anyone else CAN'T
> Any billionaire I've read about made their investment decisions themselves.
That's a myth. They have the money to externalize things other people don't so having money means you have more time to spend on yourself and others. Most billionaires you read about that grew up poor are in the vast minority of people who ended up in the top 1%
> I recommend reading some biographies of wealthy people and how they got that way. Kennedy, Jobs, Gates, Carnegie, Buffet, Musk, Hearst, Getty, Walton, Bezos, take your pick, etc.
War profiteering, Screwed employees out of their stock, born fairly wealthy which allowed him access to tech others didn't have, Robber Baron, Talented and Lucky, Talented and Lucky, Printed lies, Money from parents, Externalized costs onto US taxpayer, Used investor money to build a company because he came from a banking background.
Most of the people didn't get wealthy because they worked harder, were smarter, etc. They either were in the right place at the right time and their hard work enabled them to take advantage of their luck or they were born into wealth and used that as an advantage. You're also comparing wildly different time periods with different rates of economic mobility.
That's not to say these people were undeserving of their wealth or that they are bad people, but realistically wealth for the vast majority of people is something that they are born into, especially in top 1%.
This point is especially poignant when you realize that the families that are wealthy in parts of the world such as Venice, Italy today are roughly the same families that were wealthy in 600 AD.
Edit: To clarify I think we're all really talking about the top 1% of the developed world. Not just the worth at large as others have noted most of us reading this are probably in the top 1% globally when including undeveloped nations.