[zepto]

Could be both. But in the case of trump, his wealth was inherited, so the argument goes in the direction Krugman states.

[setra]

which he increased by an order of magnitude.

[zepto]

It was gigantic to begin with, and he has performed about as well as an index fund over his period in business, avoiding bankruptcy only by fluke.

[setra]

He goes from tens of millions is assets to billions. A fluke you say. If that was so easy we would have a lot more billionaires. Investment choices are always obvious after the fact.

[zepto]

I said the avoiding of bankruptcy was a fluke. And yes, it is certainly the case that if more people inherited $40 million when Trump did, we'd have many more billionaires today since a conservative investment strategy over the same period would have made them so.

https://www.quora.com/Did-Donald-Trump-inherit-a-lot-of-mone...