Contrary to general belief, that wealth is intergenerational, most billionaires are self made.
A quick Google search gave me this list:
In this list we can see:
- Bill Gates (Microsoft)
- Warren Buffet (Berkshire Hathaway)
- Bernard Arnault (LVMH Moët)
- Larry Ellison (Oracle)
- Larry Page (Google)
- Sergey Brin (Google)
- Jeff Bezos (Amazon)
- Mark Zuckerberg (Facebook)
- Elon Musk (Tesla)
- Carlos Slime (Grupo Carso)
- Steve Jobs (Apple)
- Oprah Winfrey (The Oprah Winfrey Show)
- Howard Schultz (Starbucks)
- Ralph Lauren (Ralph Lauren)
- Kenneth Langone (Home Depot)
- J.K. Rowling (Author of Harry Potter)
If you notice, most (not all) of those billionaire were poor. They had the tenacity to build wealth from zero.
Winfrey was born into poverty in rural Mississippi to a single teenage mother and later raised in inner-city Milwaukee. She has stated that she was molested during her childhood and early teenage years and became pregnant at 14
Schultz grew up in the Canarsie public housing projects. According to Schultz, his family was poor.
The Jobs family was not affluent, and only by expending all their savings were they able to buy a new home in 1967, allowing Steve to change schools.
Langone was born in Roslyn Heights, New York, to Italian American working-class parents. His father was a plumber and his mother a cafeteria worker. Langone’s family has been described as having “a lot of love, but not a lot of money.”
Rowling sought government assistance and got £69 (US$103) per week from Social Security. She later described her economic status as being as “poor as it is possible to be in modern Britain, without being homeless”.
We owe to the billionaires
These people have generated enormous wealth to humanity. Everyone of their products and services have benefited us. In addition, billionaires inspire most of us. Just think of how much Google has improved our live. How much better of we are with the knowledge that there is an Amazon service that can deliver anything we want within a day or two. Imagine all the the pollution Elon Musk is preventing with his Tesla vehicles. We owe a lot to these billionaires.
Elon Musk slept on the floor and showered at the local WMCA.
Opportunity is all around us
I feel that the same opportunity is available to all of us. If you if you are from a minority, of a woman, if you have the tenacity and ambition, you can become as wealthy as you want to.
Anyone can take online courses, for free, and start a business. Anyone can achieve the American dream. Poverty is a choice, the choice of not taking action to improve oneself, not taking to become an investor instead of a consumer.
I would rather buy stocks in Apple than buy an iPhone, but obviously most people rather have the iPhone. I rather ride my bicycle than to have a fancy Gas guzzler automobile. I rather take online courses than watch Netflix. All of us have the same choices, and most of us choose poverty.
My personal experience
I am a Latino in Canada. I have very little education, poor command of English and French language, nor friends and family to help me, no intergeneration wealth. I wasn’t ambitious enough to become rich, but I chose not to be poor, and 20 years after my arrival in Canada, I became financially independent. Today, I work mostly to keep myself busy, if I stop working, I will ok.
If I can do it, without ever earning big chunks of money, any white, native Canadian, should be able to do it as well.
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