[bko]

> However, staying in that bracket is much harder; you need to have a windfall every year (so, be a successful VC) or be an executive.

That's a good point. When people talk about "the 1%" or "the wealthiest families", they take the group that would qualify to be in that ranking today, and compare them with a different group from the past. But they're not the same people. You really need to do a longitudinal study. Take the same people and see how their wealth has grown.

For instance, take the richest person from the 1980s

Yoshiaki Tsutsumi dominated the richest list in the 1980s thanks to his real estate empire. However, times soon changed for Tsutsumi when real estate values tanked in the 1990s and he was caught up in an accounting scandal in the early 2000s. As of 2006, he dropped off the list of the wealthiest people in the world.

Today he's worth 500 million.

To make it that wealthy you generally have to take highly concentrated risks or be extremely leveraged. And this rarely lasts.

https://www.celebritynetworth.com/richest-businessmen/busine...

[robertlagrant]

You have to keep delivering extreme amounts of value for decades, which is not easy. Much simpler (relatively speaking) to make a few million and retire.