How the .0001% Made Its Money

If Gates didn't have the trust fund, and didn't invest it into Microsoft, then why are you referring to it as somehow indicting his success?

In fact, the IBM exec is not how Microsoft got the contract for DOS. Microsoft was already a very successful software company by the time the deal with IBM was signed, they had millions in profit in 1980 (in 1980 dollars).

They already had the equivalent of $60 to $80 million in sales (2013 dollars) in fiscal 1980, with 40 employees. They did the equivalent of $130 million in sales in 1981 (DOS 1.0 was first released in August 1981). If you understand anything about the software market's history, you understand how already substantial that was at the time for a stand-alone software business. Fact is, Microsoft was already one of the biggest software companies before they ever signed that deal.

IBM was looking to compete with Apple and others in a very important, fast growing market for personal computing. A multi-billion dollar market opportunity at the time (1980 dollars at that).

Your claim is that IBM would have just given that opportunity to any 'kids' with a half-way connection to an IBM exec (that one of the most powerful companies on earth would rest a multi-billion dollar, critical, opportunity with somebody just over one modest connection). It's an absurd position to put it nicely.

That said I wasn't trying to point to it as the sole contributing factor for Bill Gates, just one of many that may play a part in the overall trend and noting that one of the most obvious has it in his family's history.

If you want to put it in numerical terms: going from 100M to 100B is arguably easier than going from -10K to +100M (even though there is less money involved)

He is not suggesting his privilege wrote Gates software for him, but that privilege gave Gates a substantial advantage over the large number of other people writing software and starting software companies at the same time.

His privilege is unlikely to have been a sufficient condition to explain his success, but it is also entirely unrealistic to assume that his privileged background did not provide him with a number of benefits, down to even basic stuff like growing up in an environment where success and ambition is expected and normal.

I worked with someone who failed businesses over and over, each time going back to live off his family's wealth for a bit until trying the next businesses, until finally one of them hit and made tons of money. If you ask him, he'll tell you he didn't inherit a cent, and was a self-made millionaire. Technically accurate, but doesn't tell the full story.

It's been a nice little success. It might be the most successful independently owned donut shop in the area.

But we all know that her donut shop, despite the significant amount of cash necessary to purchase the building and jumpstart the business, is just a hobby for her, the same way sewing quilts is a hobby to my mom. My mom doesn't fret about the few hundred bucks she may put into her quilts, even if she doesn't make a dime off of them. And the billionaire's wife won't fret if the hundreds of thousands of dollars necessary to even test the business all go to waste because nobody buys their donuts. They will barely notice the money has been spent. If my mom wanted to just start up a donut shop here for fun, well, that would be absolutely impossible--it wouldn't even be an option.

Why do I bring any of this up? Because context matters. Bill Gates is self-made, yes, but you have to interpret "self-made" in context. His little jumpstart, which appears minor in the shadow of Microsoft, constituted more success than most people in America will ever enjoy over the course of their lifetimes.

While that's somewhat true, the fact remains that almost all of the people on that list might not be there if they weren't born into at least the upper middle class. They took advantage of the privileges given to them, so it's not like they don't deserve it. But there are likely those from poverty and the lower middle class who work their ass off setting up businesses in things they have access to, mainly restaurants/stores, and only ever move into the upper middle class as hard as they try and as gifted/intelligent as they may be.

[1]and perhaps others like Zuckerberg more so than Buffet, who could probably have somewhat more slowly honed his investment skills and found patrons whilst working the sort of day job people with ordinary middle class backgrounds can easily get.

What was the unique opportunity of that kid some streets down here that got gunned down when he was 10 years old?

What was the unique opportunity of the record amount of slaves worldwide? (by the way, did you knew the world has more "traditional" slaves now than any other time in history?)

Or... what is my unique opportunity? Being in debt? Not having a single important connection? Going to shitty university? Yes, I am intelligent, I make games, but I see lots of people with less skill than me earning millions, just because they were friends of someone somewhere or their dad was the minister of something in the government. Ultimate example: Eike Batista, that CLEARLY is incompetent, since none of the business he started on his own had profits, yet his father that was the mining minister obviously had a hand in Eike 90% accuracy in finding minerals in areas previously surveyed by the goverment during his father tenure while this information is "secret" and private companies should not know, and the government recently happily handed him billions and kicked out thousands of people from their homes so he could make his lastest failure project.

That does not mean she interfered. It's just a reminder that we should be careful about blindly accepting published accounts of events where the full details are only known by a small number of people all with their own agendas. This of course applies to everything.

"In 1980, she discussed with then-IBM Corp. Chairman John Opel, who was also on the United Way committee, the business IBM was doing with Microsoft. Opel, some accounts say, knew little about the venture, but mentioned Mary Gates to IBM executives who introduced Microsoft at a meeting of IBM's top-level management committee a few weeks later."

http://articles.latimes.com/1994-06-11/news/mn-2837_1_mary-g...

The episode is a textbook example of "social connections" at work.

here are the variables: father is a congressman (yes/no) took good advantage of opportunities (yes/no)

to combine them we have: yes/yes, yes/no, no/yes, no/no.

so you are saying that it didn't matter that his father was a congressman because he took advantage of his opportunities. But imagine a warren buffet who didn't have a well positioned family, and didn't have the opportunities he had- Still a wiley person- our no/yes. Where is he on the forbes 400?

Warren Buffet is not exactly a rags to riches story. It's more of a riches to unimaginable riches story.

While it's possible and interesting, I certainly wouldn't make policy recommendations or support charities based on that kind of evidence.

In the meantime, while independent parties come up with something more conclusive, let's try to affect known vectors for stunted childhood development like parental substance abuse, prenatal care, and malnourishment. And, again, these are real problems we should be doing something about anyway.

Barring occupations like professional sports, though, common sense would tend to suggest that that a higher IQ would tend to lead to a higher salary in the majority of cases.

http://www.sciencemag.org/content/341/6149/976

http://serendip.brynmawr.edu/exchange/node/3880

http://www.cepr.eu/meets/wkcn/7/770/papers/Banerjee.pdf

Have a good look at yourself in the mirror.

In other words: They're seemingly trying to make the story sound more relevant than it is, by framing it as if they have something to say about "America's upper class", when the data they look at consists only of a tiny subset of extreme outliers.