Zuckerberg,Bezos,Gates.Behind Every Self-Made Millionaire Is a Father with Money

But (mostly) personal blogs? It's insanity that accessing it requires either a medium account (so you can be tracked) or that you use the app (so you can be tracked).

thefz• 3 years ago

They have rich fathers.

cuteboy19• 3 years ago

Aren't these the same people who say things like

the difference between a billion dollars and a million dollars is a billion dollars

Mobility is bad unless it's literally from zero to billion?

mcpackieh3• 3 years ago

Behind Every Self-Made Millionaire Is a Father with Money

Dumb headline, obviously wrong. It may be true for those billionaires but there are many millionaires for which this isn't true. I know single-digit millionaires who ran away from home as teenagers and never had anything to do with their parents again.

czechdeveloper2• 3 years ago

You know what is difference between a million and a billion?

Approximately a billion.

brigadier1323• 3 years ago

So given that, these million dollar loans they received from family to start their businesses really don't amount to much. And Bezos only got $240k.

mcpackieh3• 3 years ago

Yes, there's a huge difference between a billion and a million. That's why the headline talking about billionaires as millionaires is dumb.

beardyw• 3 years ago

Ah, I remember when a billion really was a billion. These paltry thousand millions are chicken feed.

"Previously in British English (but not in American English), the word "billion" referred exclusively to a million millions (1,000,000,000,000). However, this is not common anymore, and the word has been used to mean one thousand million (1,000,000,000) for several decades."

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1,000,000,000

1letterunixname2• 3 years ago

It should be apparent that the movement of balance sheets (in the form of income sheets) can be modeled approximately by (discrete and/or discontinuous) partial differential equations. The fundamental principle is rate of change of the balance sheet is relatively proportional to the amount present. Qualitatively, "It takes money to make money." Thus, a homeless person getting from $0 to $1M cannot be had without some range of help of others and a person growing at roughly $100M to $101M shouldn't be as difficult per se.

Corollary: If you can count your money, then you're not rich. (Liquid net worth is always an educated guess, varies by kinds of assets and debts, liquidation timeframe, and varies by the day.)

rewmie5• 3 years ago

It may be true for those billionaires but there are many millionaires for which this isn't true.

The term "with money" is subjective and open to interpretation, but I don't think that it means "middle-class" either.

Due to inflation, the term "millionaire" today does not convey the same meaning that it did a few years ago. Middle class families with high 5-/low six-digit incomes can aspire to become millionaires by passively saving their salary.

This is definitely what "millionaire" means.

mcpackieh3• 3 years ago

I agree, but the article was written in 2023 when middle class families can reasonably aspire to become millionaires, so making the headline talking about millionaires being impossibly privileged just seems inexcusably lazy and dishonest to me.

gnicholas2• 3 years ago

Mike Bezos, Jeff’s adoptive father and a Cuban immigrant who worked as an engineer at Exxon, one of the world’s top oil companies

So his "father with money" is a Cuban immigrant? That kind of changes the narrative.

rewmie5• 3 years ago

So his "father with money" is a Cuban immigrant? That kind of changes the narrative.

An Exxon engineer is hardly a homeless begger.

Turing_Machine5• 3 years ago

It's also hardly a billionaire. Engineers are solidly middle-class.

hindsightbias• 3 years ago

The Dells weren’t poor either

friend_and_foe5• 3 years ago

Funny, the only mention of Elon Musk is in the description of the header photo... I wonder, why include him in the photo at all if you're not going to talk about him? Did he have rich parents?

So what I'm getting from the article is that these three men lived in middle class households in the 70s, 80s and 90s, a period in America with a strong middle class, and that by today's standards had well off parents, but by the standards at the time, maybe only a little better off than the average person? There's a big difference between withdrawing a quarter million dollars from the bank and taking out a home equity loan and risking your security to help your son's business venture.

nomilk• 3 years ago

why include (Musk) in the photo if you're not going to talk about him?

Answer: www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clickbait

whatscooking3• 3 years ago

Everyone knows Elon Musk’s father owned a emerald mine in Zambia. The only person who denies it is Elon.

inemesitaffia• 3 years ago

There's no evidence of actual ownership

friend_and_foe5• 3 years ago

Musk has a million dogecoin bounty for anyone who can prove that claim. There are interviews with his dad where his dad says basically he bought some emeralds from an Italian guy who was chiseling them from a rock in the ground. That's a far cry away from an emerald mine fortune, when I think "emerald mine" I think John of God level fortunes, and they used what money they made to move out of South Africa. From my understanding they were middle class at best.

Turing_Machine5• 3 years ago

Everyone who knows anything at all about mining knows that "owning a mine" (any kind) says nothing whatsoever about the wealth of the owner. It's quite common to put more money into the ground than you ever get back out.

I've known several gold mine owners over the years. To be blunt: none of them had a pot to piss in. Some of them made enough to get by, but that's it. Others had to subsidize their mines by working in town part of the year.

friend_and_foe5• 3 years ago

Lol so now the article is getting edited as criticism builds in this thread? If that isn't evidence that someone's trying to create a narrative...

footgunslinger• 3 years ago

Steve Wozniak, Steve Jobs

sys_647382• 3 years ago

The narratives nowadays always try to paint Gates as a pillar of the community and ace businessman. But in reality his start was down to pure luck and then building a monopoly through illegal business practices and totally unethical behavior. The guy always will be a cretin.

mikhailfranco• 3 years ago

Nothing original from MS.

All tech cloned (C#, Excel) or aquihire (Simonyi/Brodie for Word from XeroxParc) or corp acquisition (too many to mention), or some combination (Myrvold DSR, acquire a smart guy's company with a clone of IBM multitasking).

jwestbury• 3 years ago

I don't know, I've seen an increase in people viewing "philanthropists" as, essentially, oligarchs trying to go under the radar -- using their money to mold society in the way they think is best, and ultimately just exercising power in a way that seems altruistic. Perhaps sometimes it is altruistic -- but there are clear examples of continuing to spend money on ideas they believe strongly in spite of the evidence (e.g., Bill Gates' billions spent on evaluating teachers based on test scores).

sys_647382• 3 years ago

The Zuck has proven that getting lucky with one webpage is more about being in the right place at the right time, as opposed to any skill or business acumen he has. The strategy to buy up all the potential competitors in your space allows him to take the scattergun approach to extremes. But Zuck has proven that anything his Facebook company tries to grow organically is a disaster.

lr1970• 3 years ago

Well, there are anecdotes contrary to this proposition. For example Google's cofounder Sergey Brin [0] comes from an immigrant family of modest means, upper middle class perhaps but not rich.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sergey_Brin

Zuckerberg,Bezos,Gates.Behind Every Self-Made Millionaire Is a Father with Money

Related Stories