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Comment by RcouF1uZ4gsC | Hacker News Reader

> In reality Bezos's mommy and daddy gave him $245,573 to stop Amazon from failing in 1995.

Actually, it is not that out of reach that a person who is a professional such as an engineer or a doctor or lawyer to have $250,000 to be able to give to an adult child.

And it is possible for a poor person to encourage their children to study and become a doctor or engineer (see for example the Asian immigrant communities).

Thus a person who comes to the US poor, could have a billionaire grandchild.

And no other country offers this kind of opportunity at scale the way America does which is why so many people from all over the world endeavor to come here.

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I think the $200k-300k Bezos got was also most of this parent’s life savings. It was their retirement fund they gambled on their son’s company.

The rest of the money (excluding his own savings) he got the old fashion way, begging VCs and other investors.

I'm pretty sure they invested it, and have fine exceptionally well from it

>And it is possible for a poor person to encourage their children to study and become a doctor or engineer (see for example the Asian immigrant communities).

The Asian immigrant communities benefit from a much more stable environment than other immigrant or domestic communities have (and less systemic racism and exclusion). The same is not the case for the black or latino communities for example.

And even if the child of poor immigrant community (Asian or whatever) studies hard to become a doctor or engineer, they'd still have to do it under less opportunities, with less connections, more sacrifices, in worse school districts, with less access to tutors, with more stressful family environment (even less nutricion, more need to move, in more dangerous neighborhoods), etc than the child from a upper middle class or rich family. That's the injustice and lack of meritocracy.

Well it wasn't always a case for the Asian community either yet somehow the Asian community thrives today.

The same can be said for other white communities too like the Irish and the Italians.

The experiences for different Asian origins are different from my understanding; the experience of say Burmese or Lao immigrants is likely different from Chinese or Indian ones.

>Well it wasn't always a case for the Asian community either yet somehow the Asian community thrives today.

That's because the Asian community has had the (stabler, more beneficial) conditions I've speak about for 3-4 decades at least -- it's not the time of the railroads of the WWII camps. Meanwhile, blacks and latinos still face those issues to this day.

Even so, even those Asians from poor backgrounds who do make it, have to work at it far harder than a middle class/rich kid. Equality is not just about a class of people (e.g. poor immigrants) getting the same outcomes. It's also not having to work harder and under more adverse conditions to get them.

(The injustice is the same to how to women had to be much better and work harder to "prove themselves" in order to get them same career outcomes as men).

sources?

how is living across the globe from your extended family leading to a more stable environment?

until recently, did asians not have to achieve higher scores than black/latino to get the same opportunities? how is this not exactly systemic racism?

>how is living across the globe from your extended family leading to a more stable environment?

In that your real family is not looked down upon (not as much as a poor black family, they're even a "positive bias" for asians from whites), denied loans or opportunities in the same way, your community is not rife with drugs and violence, your school district is not as underfunded, cops don't just shoot you in the same rate, and so on.

>until recently, did asians not have to achieve higher scores than black/latino to get the same opportunities? how is this not exactly systemic racism?

It is. From all I've read, Asians faced racism, and suffered from ill-conceived programs to artificially boost other communities that excluded them, too. At least though they got a stabler environment, more acceptance, and more opportunities (see above) to achieve those higher scores than black/latino kids, even considering the "affirmitive action" and such (which only benefited a handful of black kids anyway).

As a reference, $245,573 in 1995 is like $495,962 in 2023.

And $245,573 in the S&P 500 in 1995 would be worth over $2.2 million today.

This is because asset price inflation has grown at much higher rates that consumer prices (CPI).

Jeff Bezos' Dad is an example of a refugee to billionaire story. He came to the USA as a refugee and eventually became a billionaire by investing 245k in what would become Amazon.

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