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Comment by zepolen | Hacker News Reader

Would you say a person like Bezos would remain poor if they were in that exact situation?

Yes. Jeff Bezos parents gave him a loan of $245,573, in 1993 money to start Amazon. This indicates that he grew up if not very wealthy, but solidly on the upper side of middle class. Growing up poor he would've probably not had the opportunities to get into Princeton (statistically), so probably would have had a harder time breaking in the hedge fund industry, giving him less cash on hand, and probably wouldn't have started Amazon. Maybe growing up poor he could have, but its more likely as a smart ambitious poor person, he'd have gone to whatever school gave him a good scholarship, and then ended up as an Engineer or some other safe profession and landed middle class.

Being born rich lets you take a lot more risks.

He might have not founded Amazon if he was poor, but that's not a question anyone was asking.

The overwhelming majority of people, if they were given $245,573 in 1993, would not go on to build a trillion-dollar company. What Bezos accomplished was extraordinary, whatever way you look at it.

Yes, but he had safety nets upon safety nets to take risks. Of course, the more likely outcome is that he would have been ok but not a billionaire, but he had the luxury of aiming high because he would still be ok if he failed.

> > Would you say a person like Bezos would remain poor

> Yes. ... but its more likely as a smart ambitious poor person, he'd have gone to whatever school gave him a good scholarship, and then ended up as an Engineer or some other safe profession and landed middle class.

So by yes you mean...no. Unless middle class is now poor?

Anyone whose parents can give them a quarter of a million dollars as essentially fun money is so far divorced from reality than actual middle class people that it's hilarious to even attempt to make that comparison.

By the time Bezos started Amazon, he was already an SVP at DE Shaw, so he certainly could have found the money somewhere else. His mom had him as a teenager and his adoptive father was a Cuban refugee. That said, his grandfather was quite wealthy.

Someone with extremely valuable skills and knowledge? No, of course not. Even assuming he somehow didn’t know anybody from when he was rich, he’d know where to find people to talk to, and what to say, to start getting enough money to stop being poor pretty fast.

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