In gates’ case it was a father with enough money he could attend one of the few schools that he could have access to a computer and a program to learn IT. While ALSO having an investment banker uncle who was willing to invest millions into his company early on.
Also didn’t his mother help get him the contract to provide ms dos for IBM? And didn’t he buy MS-DOS using dad’s money?
Yes his mother was on the board of United Way where she was friend’s with a board member at IBM.
C O N N E C T I O N S
“I built this company by myself, from the ground up, my own blood sweat and tears, no help from anyone, and a $20 million dollar gift from my daddy”
Donald Trump’s famous “very small loan” he got from his father…
If only any of them even got a million.
I mean $200000 vs $20000000, not a big difference.
How much did you get from your dad? I know my dad has nothing to give me, mainly because of those guys that were able to get a hand out pulling the ladder up behind them.
In this country even being sent to college is a privilege, you are either gifted it from your parents or you are an indentured servant for your student loans/tuition. A handout from your parents is a handout from your parents, no matter the amount.
It’s nothing to be ashamed of. Everyone needs help every now and then. Just don’t label yourself “selfmade” when you are not.
Yeah, anyone who claims to be self-made is just showing a lack of perspective. I got an inheritance from my grandparents and college tuition from my parents, but that’s really a rounding error. I was raised in a supportive home where my physical, emotional, and academic needs were met. My extended family is about as drama free as they come. I’m tall and usually well liked, so I wasn’t picked on at school. When I came out as gay, my parents were supportive. I had access to a computer as a kid, where I developed a knack for programming that developed into a career. Point is, there are so many boosts or drags that a person can experience in their life, even look purely at money is too simplistic.
My dad left me with PTSD and a mother solely reliant on social security!
Did any of those guys get 20M? Y’all have issues with factual reality.
Trump said the line about getting a small loan of a million dollars from his father. He did not mention the later loans of larger sums or his eventual inheritance.
Nitpicking an obvious joke based on a real tone deaf comment from the wealthy is a terrible look.
Is Trump mentioned here? Is 1M now 20M? Reality is a tough concept for many of you.
Yeah, no picking on Trump, guys!!!
Again, just pointing out objective reality 🤷♂️
And boot lickers have a hard time with a joke
Boot lickers have no taste
It’s a joke from the movie Get Hard by the way.
Not an economist, but a lousy CS grad, so my rambling may be incorrect. But honestly, I have no words for your genius. More specifically, the lack of it.
- you ignored inflation around the 1970s
- you did not take into account the cost of living
- you also conveniently ignored the lifestyle choices
Inflation has caused the cumulative price increase of 488.65% in the US from 1975 to 2023-almost-2024. $200,000 in 1975 is around $1,177,295.17 in today’s time.
$20 million is just an exaggeration for the light-hearted joke @[email protected] made, it’s not that deep.
Source: Inflation calculator
👌
200k in 1975 is worth about 1.2M today
So about 95% short of the stated number. Understood.
Every thread you are in, it’s a guarantee you’ll simp for Republicans and/or rich assholes.
I’m so very, VERY sorry for pointing out that none of these guys weren’t given anywhere as close as commented on. I guess pointing out facts is bad these days. Wild.
I’ll make sure to put “WARNING, THE FOLLOWING IS A JOKE” next time, for those of us that have a hard time telling the difference.
It’s clearly not. Have you seen the hate this has generated? It’s an entire cult 🤣.
Generated by you, taking offense to me “over exaggerating” and not being “based in reality”, taking a joke way too seriously. Chill out bro.
Yes. People don’t like being called out for making shit up. It’s okay when your do it, but if the right does it it gets posted to the sub 🤦♂️.
You might even be right, but it’s clear you’ve got an agenda, and that’s what I’m commenting on. It’s very obvious
Ahhh, an agenda of fact based reality. I deeply apologize for pointing out facts.
The agenda of if a rich person does it, it’s ok and that’s all that matters
Y’all just like to make shit up when it suits you and screech when it doesn’t 🤷♂️🤣
deleted by creator
I have long said that if we look at typical success stories somewhat soberly, it is always a combination of luck and privilege. Hard work and talent can be very helpful, but they are in no way a prerequisite for success.
To illustrate: Whenever someone says “taking risks must be rewarded”, it is always worth pointing out that you don’t get rewarded for taking risks, but for getting lucky while taking a risk. Also, you have to be in a position to take a risk in the first place (i.e. have time, resources, and the means to not starve if it goes belly up); in other words, some degree of privilege.
Yep. I have no doubt that Gates and Bezos and Zuckerberg are genuinely very smart and hard-working people, but there are a LOT of smart and hard-working people with poor parents, and you don’t see a lot of billionaires in that group.
I know a lot of talented hardworking homeless people. Many of them work harder than I do and I make 6 figures. We’re not in a meritocracy, we’re all one misstep or accident away from being disabled and on the streets regardless of skill or work ethic.
It’s worth remembering that once you get to the street, you now live in a combat zone that will cause PTSD along with a host of other psychological issues.
Housing first initiatives are the cheapest option we have. Once society stops creating new psychological disorders in their homeless population, then the formerly homeless can move out of survival mode, and actually address their many other problems*.
*Provided of course that one can actually afford to thrive on a single income regardless of the job one takes.
A lot of people also seem to ignore the fact that the risks are not the same for everybody.
E.g. four people get the same business opportunity. For person A, failure means they have to ask their parents to bail them out. For person B, they have to move in with their parents. For person C, they have to move their family into a tent under the bridge. And for person D, they have to ration their medication and risk dying.
Person A could probably try things out a few times without suffering too much other than embarrassment. Person B, maybe a couple times, but that’s pushing it. The others have to pretty damn sure it’ll pay off, and even then, the risk might be too much.
Ideally, taking business risks should be rewarded as much as possible. That keeps an economy dynamic, flexible, and responsive to new opportunities. Otherwise you get an economy dominated by big brittle players that are content to sit back and milk cash cows. Oracle comes to mind, with its army of lawyers eager to shake down institutions that may not have quite the correct license for a server.
This is where bankruptcy for businesses is incredibly important. People should be able to start a business based on an idea, try to grow it, and not suffer personal ruin if the business fails. A good social safety net is beneficial as well to make sure that after a business folds, its former owners still have the bear necessities of life. Likewise, there needs to be a strong inheritance tax so the wealthy have their wealth significantly diluted.
None of this will make things equal between the children of the upper class and lower class, obviously. It just makes social mobility a little easier and benefits the economy as a whole.
That is the opposite of risk. A risk is something you do with a poor chance of success, possibly with a good reward if successful. What you’re describing is a guarantee. Now look at the returns on guaranteed interest certificates and the high-risk stocks. Sure, some of the high-risk stocks outperform the guaranteed certificates, but many also end up being worth nothing.
Risk exists on a spectrum. US Treasury Bonds would be about the lowest risk asset you can invest in, but there’s always risk at some level that the dipshit Republicans in Congress finally manage to blow up the bond market.
A healthy economy has a good mix of creation of new businesses, destruction of inefficient businesses, and retention of businesses that are well run. The family run corner grocery store may just not need to grow and change much.
Yes, exactly. Businesses should be less risky to open and that should be paid for by larger corporate taxes. Coca Cola is selling sugar water that costs 50¢ for a dollar. They can afford higher taxes because of their huge brand name. And I own shares of Coca Cola.
born on third base
Was just complaining about this to my therapist. Boomers, in general, were born on third base. Raging economy, low-priced homes, cheap college, think they pulled themselves up by their bootstraps. “Kids today…” Fuck you. Your situation only existed because Europe was destroyed by war and America was untouched.
I don’t know.
On a related note, there are also studies showing that luck as opposed to skill is the dominant factor in success. A person who has average skills but enjoys having good a good start in life, who has access to good connections, education, and so on, will have a far better chance of becoming successful than an exceptional person who doesn’t get these benefits.
I’ve recently experienced this myself and it’s insane. I grew up in what appears (at least to me) to be an average middle class life. I lived at home during college and commuted to my local community college, then state school to get my 4 year degree in CS
I grinded my ass off during college to get a good internship which led me to getting a $220k a year job at AWS with 0 connections. That one position was my lucky break that sent me into a world of connections I couldn’t even fathom.
As a result of that job I moved to the bay area and made a bunch of friends both in and out of my field. Through that I’ve met VCs, mentors, recruiters, and many others who I could get a job interview through just by asking. I’ve also gotten a few other people jobs through direct referral. Don’t get me wrong they still have to interview and perform well, but getting short listed for interviews is incredibly powerful.
I recently got a new job, full remote, amazing benefits, and higher salary than AWS (slightly less total comp) through a friend of a friend. Despite the tech market being awful I went from asking for a referral to signing an offer in 6 weeks with only 1.5 YOE. I’m no one special either, I just knew the right people to get interviews and then studied my ass off to pass them. Most people capable of passing wouldn’t even get an interview because it’s a numbers game.
It’s crazy to think about isn’t it. So much of your career ends up being just dumb luck of meeting the right people, and ending up in jobs where you make useful connections. And I have friends who are hands down smarter than I am, who ended up with crappier jobs because their dumb luck took a slightly different turn. I’ve come to realize that this whole notion of meritocracy under capitalism is pure nonsense. You do have to put in work into your career, but getting the right opportunity is what really matters.
There are plenty of people who are smart and ambitious, but only a few ever end making it. And then it’s easy to look back and to start attributing your success to having worked hard, and being smart, and so on. The reality is that you just won the lottery.
I think it’s both. I’ve always subscribed to the idea that you create your own luck in a way. As in, working hard will allow you more “lucky” opportunities, but it doesn’t guarantee them. There are certainly people who will never get lucky despite working hard, and there are those who will fall upwards despite doing the bare minimum. As long as you make a comfortable living I wouldn’t stress over it, and try to help those who are less lucky around you when you can.
I look at this as a systemic problem, sort of like a rigged game. The dice is loaded in favor of people who have more opportunities, and statistically they’re the ones who end up being successful. I think we should strive to have social systems that afford good opportunities to everyone, so you don’t have to win the birth lottery to have a good chance at success. I feel that I’m one of the lucky people who make a comfortable living, but I don’t think it should be a privilege.
“I am, somehow, less interested in the weight and convolutions of Einstein’s brain than in the near certainty that people of equal talent have lived and died in cotton fields and sweatshops”.
When I started Reynholm Industries, I had just two things in my possession: a dream and six million pounds. Today I have a business empire the like of which the world has never seen the like of which. I hope it doesn’t sound arrogant when I say that I am the greatest man in the world!
For the uninitiated - IT Crowd
Yes Security? Everyone on floor 5 is fired.
GET A BIKE
“If you don’t want to be poor, why weren’t you just born into a rich family? I have no respect for your bad choices pre life!”
“Because you are poor you are unworthy*. Because you are unworthy you don’t deserve support.”
( * replace by favorite slur)
And because they don’t get any support, people remain poor, thereby closing the circular reasoning.
Is there any doubt about that? This is no news, even for people with a big house, cars …
a father with money
uhh, it’s HER TURN (to give birth to a failson who fails perpetually upward)
Yea they had the oportunity to go to collage! They were rich! Hahaha wtf
You have the same income image for both links.
The median cost for a one bedroom apartment in the US is NOT $5,000 a month. First result on my search has $3190 for New York, but most of the listed cities are around $1,500 a month which is $18,000 a year.
sigh story is so bloated
tl;dr anyone?
TLDR; ALL billionaires are only billionaires because their dad’s made them so. Here is a list of 3 billionaires to prove it. One of them is adopted but it still counts.
Money follows money.
Billionaires bad.
Steve Jobs adoptive father was a machinist and a car salesman without a college degree.
Steve Jobs wasn’t a billionaire.
I don’t know how true this is but according to forbes his networth at 2011 was valued at 7b
I’ll trust yours since mine was from wiki. Tyvm
Forbes is a pretty shit source, too.
deleted by creator
Lololol these guys are all from upper middle class. And on the low side of that. Y’all just want to be pissed.
Non-trolls will note this person’s comment history and if you notice, you’ll see them propping up rich Republicans all over lemmy. It’s interesting that they stay here given that everyone downvotes them to hell and just generally disagrees with everything they believe, apparently.
It’s a comment that begins with “lol”. It signifies the comment is guaranteed to be misinformation and/or trolling. No need to look at their history.
What I do need is an extension which would turn any instance of “lol” on any page into a little picture of a TIE Fighter, play the flyby sound when hovered over and make it explode when clicked.
Whatever you need to tell yourself 🤷♂️
You’re fond of that hollow phrase
It’s great for the delusional opinions here.
Apparently you also find lemmy a great place to fellate the rich
I guess pointing out facts makes me like giving head 🤷♂️🤣
No sucking Jeff bezos’ dick does. You aren’t fooling anyone
Get a hobby
Upper middle class middle class with families and connections who had spare money to invest and just far enough along that they had the kids were raised with the drive to gather even more wealth. If they had been more wealthy they wouldn’t have the drive, if they were less well off then they wouldn’t have the advantages to make that drive happen.
“With money” doesn’t mean all the money. It means plenty of money. Gates loves to tell the story about how he started his company in his father’s garage. That was a three car garage because they could afford a large house with a lot of extra space Bill could use for free while starting his business.
The parents could afford to send them to prestigious schools where they made connections.
The parents had money. Recognizing this is not jealousy, it is a reason to acknowledge that massive wealth does not come from effort alone.
you guys have skewed views of middle class. What do you consider upper class?
Since there is a ton of variation on cost of living and other factors by region, I just go by rough percentages because anything more is too complex to generalize. So the following is my view, which can be applied nationally or within a state/region as the outcome is basically the same. Keep in mind that after basic expenses are paid and someone can afford to invest their long term investments and other wealth are generally not included in their income despite their actual wealth continuing to increase allowing them access to loans and other monetary options that the middle class just doesn’t have.
So how I see it by income:
Upper class as top 10%
Upper middle class would be 75%-90%
Middle class 25%-75%Sure, people in California won’t have the same monthly costs at 100k+ income to someone in the midwest, but the person in California who owns a home is building up a lot more wealth and options for loans/mortgages in higher amounts than someone in the midwest with a cheaper home. Renting is a different thing, but upper middle class and above have the option to buy and increase their wealth and puts them even further above middle class and below that aren’t able to do the same or aren’t able to save on top of the house payments.
What do you consider upper class?
ah. se I would go with what you have but upper middle class would be 65%-75% or something and 75%-85% would be like lower upper class or such (I would use the quintiles really) and to get away from money I would consider upper class to be anyone who owns a large home with no mortage (or they are keeping their mortgage optionally), same with cars, has their retirment fully funded, paid for their kids to go to any college they wanted to and has additional money to invest in kida ideas or has money for leasure vehicles/property or vacations every year. even in the 80’s
Ok so looking at real numbers I don’t think your sentiment is correct. I’ll take other numbers too but I am seeing the median income is around 70k annual.
But then I am seeing it costs around 61k just to rent a one bedroom apartment.
Are you seriously suggesting that about half of the “middle class” could not even afford to rent a one bedroom apartment?
(I got my numbers just from quick google searches fyi I tried to post pics but it did the endless scrolling bug)
deleted by creator
So upper middle class. And read the room/thread. The entire community hates these guys.
I hate these guys and think your downplaying their advantages is moronic.
You should read the room and fuck off.
Their entire post history can be summed up as “If projection incarnated as a human”, so it appears not worth engaging.
👌👍
It’s upper middle class. Y’all just want to seethe at the successful.
Mmmmmmm tasty tasty boot
