You don't get rich by working hard, not in America anyway

[hfojvt]

19. unfortunately you did not prove your thesis

not even close

The example you gave, of the Fab 400, is of the 400 richEST and how they got even richER.

First, there are lots of very rich people who are still not part of the Fab 400. The cut-off to make the Fab 400 is something like $110 million in income. And only 400 people can make that list - by definition.

But in 2005 there were 13,776 tax filers with AGI greater than $10 million.

Those people are definitely rich, although only 400 of them are members of the Fab 400. There were also 21,431 filers with AGI over $5 million, and 84,070 filers with income over $2 million and 56,615 filers with income over $1.5 million and 127,925 filers with income over $1 million. Even 524,506 filers with income over $500,000. I would hope we could all agree that those people are rich. So how did they get that way? I am guessing that at least some of them got that way through hard work.

For myself, I would also include the 2,737,802 with income over $200,000 and most of the 10,810,367 people with income over $100,000. They are in the top 11% richer than almost 90% of the rest of us. I am betting that hard work and good choices had something to do with it, as well as some good luck. For example, if I had not quit my job with the Air Force back in 1986, I could be making about $80,000 a year today. As such, I would probably be married too, and have a spouse making at least 30k, putting me in that $100k+ group.

I probably would not have worked any harder on that path than I did on the path I chose, but a good choice can make a huge difference as well.