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Comment by crdoconnor | Hacker News Reader

>Of the ten causes of inequality he lists, zero of them explain why Jeff Bezos, Larry Page, and Mark Zuckerberg are so much richer than the rest of us.

#1 is the tax code and the tax code explains a lot of how those three got so rich (e.g. Amazon's sales tax avoidance).

>I'm not sure why. Is it because they're far removed from the world of startups and don't understand how it works?

Out of curiosity how close are you to the field of tax avoidance?

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The problem with saying it’s the tax code is that there are so few else who also became that rich despite having the same tax code.

Personally I think it’s luck, a lottery with no upper bound with ever diminishing odds of winning as the prize goes up.

Luck is a big factor in the success of startups, but it is not the only factor. E.g. Jeff Bezos is lucky, but he's not merely lucky.

Certainly. I do not mean to imply it is only luck, merely that luck is the major difference between him and any of my successful private sector employers.

>The problem with saying it’s the tax code is that there are so few else who also became that rich

The whole point of the article is that there are more ultra wealthy now than there ever were before.

>Personally I think it’s luck

So what, some people are just luckier now?

> So what, some people are just luckier now?

Yes. Partly. Peak relative wealth — or the specific Gini coefficient — is not something I would expect to be constant, but is something I expect to be modified by social policies more than tax rates: what the money is spent on is more important than how much is raised.

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