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Comment by a_bonobo | Hacker News Reader

>3) The writer provides multiple counterpoint examples to the thesis in the text with Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, and Sergey Brin as being tech billionaires that came from nothing.

They didn't come from nothing - Elon Musk was 'bullied' but was still fairly rich. Bezos may have been adopted, but his 'new' father was an engineer with Exxon, and he went to a relatively fancy high school ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miami_Palmetto_High_School ), Brin is listed as an immigrant, but his father was professor of mathematics at University of Maryland, Brin also went to a reasonably fancy high school ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eleanor_Roosevelt_High_School_... ). To me Brin, Bezos, Musk are far shots from the article's 'earlier' examples of people like Warren Buffett who grew up with unemployed parents.

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Just a quick fact check. Howard Buffet was temporarily unemployed during the Great Depression. By the time Warren was 9 years old his father had a successful brokerage and was elected to the Omaha Board of Education. By the time he was 12 his father was elected to the US House. He went on to give Warren the initial investment for his investment company.

Warren didn’t grow up with unemployed parents.

Palmetto high school is one of the better public schools in Miami but Miami public school are pretty bad and under funded. Palmetto is far from an elite high schools where only rich people go.

Palmetto is the highest achieving public school in Miami-Dade county. It's no Bill Gates's Lakeside School or Zuck's Exeter, but it's where everyone in Dade County public schools who cares about academic excellence sends their kids if they can afford the nearby real estate.

I'm only basing it off of how the writer presented the argument. He didn't mention these facts, but he presented these as if they were also people with hard backgrounds, effectively arguing against his main point, which had only a single person he would point to in support of it.

Like I mentioned earlier, there's probably some truth to what he's arguing for, she just did a piss poor job making a case for her point.

DC area resident: Eleanor Roosevelt High School might be the best high school in Prince Georges County. I'm not sure that it counts as "reasonably fancy". Still, if your father is a professor of mathematics, high school may not matter that much.

It’s hilarious what passes for “self made” when you read stories about the wealthy.

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