• chingadera
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    1878 days ago

    “mainly selfmade wealth”

    That doesn’t exist, let’s stop fucking pretending it does.

    • @[email protected]
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      408 days ago

      What they really mean is that they didn’t inherit their immense wealth, which means there was a time in their lives when they weren’t obscenely wealthy.

      • chingadera
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        98 days ago

        I get what they’re getting at, but selfmade has that connotation with it.

        They could say not inherited vs inherited wealth

        • haui
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          378 days ago

          Not inherited is also wrong. Because more than 50% of americans live paycheck to paycheck, one can assume that private schools, elite universities, etc are also inherited wealth.

          They dont spawn with billions but they started at the top and just built exploitation empires.

          The is no such thing as self made wealth and an insane majprity of it is already being very comfortable and just going full bore.

          I’m not saying financial success has nothing to do with capabilities and discipline but surprisingly little.

          Or to quote jay gould, who said it before:

          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.

          • chingadera
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            58 days ago

            Very true as well. Directly exploitative vs indirectly idk man, but self made ain’t it

      • @[email protected]
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        8 days ago

        they didn’t inherit their immense wealth

        Except even that doesn’t hold up under close scrutiny. A big component of the market cap of any Fortune 100 company stems from equity and debt held by the generationally wealthy, typically through family funds managed by private equity groups. Amazon and Tesla aren’t worth $1T without the Vanderbilts and the Carnegies and the Adelsons and the Waltons bidding up asset prices. Microsoft doesn’t exist today without Bill Gates’s mom sitting on the IBM board of directors and handing her son the contracts for their 1980s OS. Hell, Berkshire Hathaway is owned by the sons of a Congressman and a federal judge, respectively.

        What’s more, the biggest source of market capital is inevitably government contracts. You can’t tell me that Michael Dell is “independently wealthy” when the bulk of his fortune came via the Texas public school system buying all his company’s computers. Particularly when the governors, legislators, and board members making these decisions are (a) big shareholders of the Dell corporation and (b) legacy scions of wealthy Texas families.

    • @[email protected]
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      38 days ago

      Only two super wealthy people come to mind: Oprah and Rowling. Both are bastards (Oprah mostly because of who she endorsed and her increasing lack of connection to the average American).

        • @[email protected]
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          27 days ago

          Didn’t think of her. Her parents did literally change their entire lives around her and sacrificed a lot to help her career, but I’d say that though most parents couldn’t afford or have the opportunity to that much, Taylor did build her empire from scratch. She didn’t come from poverty, but wasn’t wealthy from the start.

    • @[email protected]
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      78 days ago

      I made all my money myself. After I graduated from private school with my personal trainer and one on one tutoring and my car I didn’t have to work for and my apartment I didn’t have to pay for I definitely earned my first job myself. I mean, my dad didn’t interview with his good friend from the country club, I DID! Give me the credit I deserve! I am a self made man!

    • @[email protected]
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      48 days ago

      They get to play in a sandbox designed for them. They’re taught how to play in the sandbox, and are given the toys to play (roads, electricity, raw materials for example). We get to be the sand.