[PaulDavisThe1st]

The statistical evidence for your claim is not good. There is certainly a generational effect in that 5 year olds are typically not in the upper decile, simply because they generally have little to no individual wealth or income. But in the USA at least, most people die in the same decile they were born into.

[georgeecollins]

Exactly! And while a well off person may have a memory of a time in their life when they were not doing well (like in school, starting their career etc.) that can be misleading. You tend to end up like your parents more then was true three or four generations ago for many reasons: tax policy, less physical mobility, people tending more to marry with similar levels of education or income.

People debate how much social mobility there is in the US, but it seems pretty clear that the trend has been toward less mobility. The founding fathers of the US did not want to replace one aristocracy with another. Obviously there are some who think the change makes sense-- not me.

[bluefirebrand]

Something I've seen a lot is claims about individuals being self made, climbing the ladder from grit and ingenuity and such. Look at Bezos, he's an example of climbing the ladder! Or Zuckerberg!

And when you dig a bit more, you kinda find out this isn't really true?

I mean look at this AI summary of asking "Was Jeff Bezos born into wealth"

> Jeff Bezos was not born into wealth; his mother was a 17-year-old student and his adoptive father was an impoverished Cuban refugee who arrived in the U.S. alone at age 16. However, his maternal grandfather owned a large Texas ranch and later provided roughly $250,000 to help fund the launch of Amazon

Oh so his parents weren't wealthy only his grandparents. That's totally different

You know what my Grandpa gave me? A used car worth about 3 grand. Still amazing, I'm still very grateful to him! But the comparison here is absolutely not in the same league!

And I'm still a fortunate one, because many people get much less than a car from their families

[WarmWash]

The question is how many people get $250k from their family and lose it all.

Everyone's life is a mix of skill and luck, so to discredit skill, you would need to quantify the luck. An easy example is a lottery winner, a hard example is a Bezos. Any investor with the foresight to see what Bezos could do with grans money, would jump past her in line and give him triple.

[bluefirebrand]

> The question is how many people get $250k from their family and lose it all

I don't think that really matters? The fact that they even had that shot at all is such an incredible opportunity above people whose family simply cannot afford to even try

[WarmWash]

But if you have the skill to turn $250k into much more money, anyone with $250k and that knowledge will give it to you.

There are far far more stories of investors giving nascent broke startups money than families.

[grumpy_coder]

You have to have access to far more than $250k to be willing to blow that creating a startup. I may give my kids $250k for a house to live in. I do not have enough for them to yolo it on a dot com startup.