Americans Lose Faith That Hard Work Leads to Economic Gains, WSJ-NORC Poll Finds

Hard work has never led to success under capitalism.

Having capital leads to success. And pure luck.

If success were ONLY about having capital then what would that imply? The super rich people of today would come from the super rich people of their parent's generation. This model is actually incredibly bad at predicting the richest people in the US today. Gates, Musk, Buffet, Bezos, Zuckerberg, etc. Many may have come from well off families but none of them were anything close to among the richest of their generation. Looking from the other end, you'd expect the Ford Family, Getty, Hunt, Howard Hughes, etc. to have spawned the richest people of today. They havent.

But we dont have to resort to this sort of logic. We already have data showing 70% of wealthy families lost their wealth by the 2nd generations and 90% lose it by the third. https://www.nasdaq.com/articles/generational-wealth%3A-why-d...

But to be clear, you didn't say it was ONLY capital. It sounds like you're putting that as a primary thing. But you also mentioned luck.

Can you elaborate on the luck part? Wouldnt that imply that people acting randomly have a similar chance of succeeding? If not, then there must be something MORE than luck involved right? I think everyone would agree luck is involved, but disagree on the extent. Is (bad) luck the reason why the Ford family didnt produce the richest people of today? Is an insane amount of (good) luck the reason why Zuckerberg has billions?

People like Gates, Musk, Buffet are only a side show. They are there because of support from Wall Street. They're new but at the same time indistinct from old money and working for the same goals.

Moreover, a "self-made billionaire" is just a drop on the global pool of wealth. It is even good for capitalism to have these new people as a showcase, so billions will believe they can be the next, when winning the lottery if far more likely.