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Comment by aphextron | Hacker News Reader

>In coastal cities, a two income household making 250k each is not absurd, and can certainly happen with two doctors, lawyers, or even software developers.

This is why the 99% stuff misses the mark. That 1% is the best of us; our doctors, lawyers, successful small business owners, etc. People who drive the economy and create outsized value through specialized labor that is rightfully compensated. The true problem in our society is the 0.01%. There is a tiny portion of these that are the Bill Gates, and Mark Zuckerbergs who are self made. But the vast majority of them are the intergenerational wealth holders whose fortunes have simply continued to compound and provide them with an unnatural amount of power influence that is completely undeserved. It's why a wealth tax is so neccessary in this country, and if properly implemented could completely absolve the need for income tax.

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In 2018 67% of the Forbes 400 were self made

https://www.forbes.com/sites/luisakroll/2018/10/03/the-forbe...

Didn't they list Kylie Jenner, heir to and made famous by the Kardashians as 'self-made'?

This is not an authoritative list, and you can imagine that people with vast amounts of inherited wealth prefer to keep that non-public. It's easier to track wealthy people who created their own fortune, as it usually involves participating in the economy in some obvious way.

It is in fact an authoritative list. It's extraordinarily difficult to hide $3-$5 billion in personal wealth (enough to land firmly on the Forbes 400) in the US.

The companies - both public and private - that can contain or produce that level of wealth are very well known and almost impossible to hide. It's rare for Forbes or Bloomberg to find new stray billionaires that had been hiding for a long time. It does happen [1], it's just quite rare, especially versus the size of the known list. You don't magically quietly generate or inherit billions in wealth, you move things when you do that and it makes headlines (either over time or when a liquidity event occurs), it garners a lot of attention.

[1] https://www.forbes.com/sites/maddieberg/2019/02/19/the-great...

If this were true, then why is there so much genuine uncertainty over the net worth of a certain Donald J. Trump?

Am I missing something? There's nothing other than the top 10.

the money-quote from this article as it pertains to this discussion is: "In 1984, less than half the people on The Forbes 400 were self-made; in 2018, 67% of the 400 created their own fortunes."

here is the full list of the forbes 400: https://www.forbes.com/forbes-400/

How many of the 0.01% inherited their wealth, and how many have made it? Do you have any sources for that? Most people on Fortune 500 list, for example, didn't inherit any significant part of their wealth.

You aren't going to be showing up in the top few hundred against the people with recent brand new huge fortunes if you have generational wealth - note that 0.01% of a 300M population is population is 30,000 people. How many of those do we know much about?

A better question would be how many of the Forbes 500 started with significant inheritance?

An even better one would be how many people do the top 500 employ.

I don’t care what they started with - I care what they did with it.

For instance, if you started with 10MM and built a billion dollar company, great.

But if you started with 1MM and turned it into 1MM, then you really didn’t help out at all.

aye - but given that logic wouldn't it be beneficial to expand the talent pool of founders and innovators by building more efficient capital distribution mechanisms? A brilliant but rational founder may not be in a position to work without pay for years until well into their 40s, and by these statistics the top 1% of workers would lack capital to invest in their own businesses until they're in their 50s.

You make an interesting point.

But I wonder (and it's only a thought based on some observations that I've had over the years) how large the talent pool is. Because "talent" in starting a business is so much more than just the knowledge to do the work, or the capital to start it...

For instance, I've started a few businesses. All but the current one closed at roughly breakeven.

My current business has required my life savings and selling my house, but we are finally (more than 3 years!) starting to see the light at the end of the tunnel. We're profitable, but I'm not making 6-figures yet. I should be by tax day next year, and hopefully between 150-200K by the end of next year. But interestingly, based on our trajectory, the growth curve is getting steeper, which is awesome, and should top out in the low 7 figures within 5 years or so.

However, there have been several (more than I can count) strong moments of doubt, where I've just wanted to quit. It's been really, really freaking hard. My wife works full time, and that's paid the bills, but the stress has been insane. (with kids, it's not just me - I have to make sure I don't tank the whole family)

This is just one data point (I'm skipping the others for brevity), but the stuff that it takes to start a business that actually generates free cash flow is really unusual. I know other people who've started businesses and shut them down because they didn't want to make the sacrifices. Our cars are old, we sold our house, I dipped into my IRA even. Most people don't have that kind of drive (or is it insanity?). Heck, there have been days recently where I question if I can get through the next 6 months.

So "talent" in starting a business is very different from talent in being good at work. And that kind of talent I think is rare, probably because the risks and sacrifices in many cases are just several standard deviations from the norm. Or maybe I've been doing this long enough where I've become deluded - I don't really know anymore.

Anyway, hope this adds to the conversation somewhat.

Help who? Why ?

Sorry, I was using shorthand of "help" for being a positive addition to the economy (as opposed to a moral version of "help").

Well, no. These people, with their outsize influence, have aligned themselves with the wealthiest for political reasons: when they're grouped together, it's easier to fend off attacks on their income and wealth.

The fact is that the vast majority of people in above the 5% mark come from comfortable families. This would be fine, except that 1) they live in and influence a society where many live in exceedingly uncomfortable circumstances, and 2) instead of recognizing this as a moral travesty and acting accordingly, they hoard not only resources but the opportunity to better oneself.

We passed the point where "personal responsibility" was a reasonable justification for systemic suffering when we stopped hunting with rocks. Much of civilized history has been marked by the apparent ability to provide generally for the populace and the baffling decision not to. I don't think it's radical to say that we're discussing a manifestation of this phenomenon, more than anything else.

Another way the 99% stuff misses the mark is the fact that most of the 1% is closer in wealth to those of top 10% than the top 0.1%. I read an article a while back that suggested the best way to look at tiers of wealth is to consider the bottom 90%, the top 0.1%, and the 9.9% between those.

Any smaller grouping than the 1% is irrelevant. The 0.01% (which starts roughly at the secondary characters from Big Bang Theory) earns 5% of all income. They’re rich individually, but aren’t monopolizing a large fraction of society’s production.

Doctors and lawyers aren't "the best of us." Those would be teachers and firefighters and social workers and the rank and file who work at charitable foundations.

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