[haukilup]

> >This is a fair point, but in many cases you need to be rich, hard working, and smart.

> Like Paris Hilton, Kim Kardasian, etc.? No, rich is still the only requirement. Those other things just give you more options.

For every person you cite as being wildly successful only because of the money they were born into, you could also cite people who came from nothing and became multi-millionaires. Or people who were born rich and didn't succeed.

You're not wrong - there are people who only needed to be rich to begin with. But giving examples like you have doesn't counter the above point.

[Retric]

If you have 10 rich people with a 50% shot of making it : 99,990 people with a 0.005% shot of making it then the number of people with both backgrounds who made it is reasonably balanced. But, in no way is this a meritocracy.

[michaelmrose]

There are probably 10,000 who only needed to be rich for every self made multi-milli)onaire who came from nothing.