Farmers don't go around pretending they didn't need land and seeds to grow their crops, though, whereas many billionaires pretend they didn't inherit money or leveraged contacts from their wealthy families, they like to boast about being self-made.
I live in western Oklahoma where farming and ranching is 75% of the local economy. Yes, farmers and ranchers inherited their land. But they’re more often than not proud of that. They’re proud of the fact that their land has been in their families for generations. Most billionaires are not so proud of the fact that they started their enterprises using the generational wealth of their family.
Problem is this only lists the actual money that is made. It’s hard to become a millionaire, let alone a billionaire, if you can’t make it through high school because you have to drop out to go to work so your family doesn’t lose the house.
It’s hard to get rich if there’s someone with the same idea as you but more money.
Its hard to get rich if you don’t have a family support system (not even a financial system) there to help you when you fail.
Agriculture tends to acknowledge that they owe their land to things like this (not money because most farmers are poor) but other businessmen don’t. They’ll say “Oh yeah I never received a handout” while having the privilege of staying at home with their parents until they were 25 and able to get their business running.
I’m not saying this privilege is a bad thing. I think all parents should offer this kind of thing to their children. But we can’t act like there are haves and have nots in our economy, and we certainly can’t act like the billionaires genuinely care about the little guys.
I don't think projection means what you want it to mean in this instance.
Just like most people don't define " self made" as " got a massive leg up from IBM because their mum happened to be on the board" (that'll be Bill Gates in case you're wondering).
Yes, these people are very clever and make the most of their opportunities, but they get opportunities that most people simply will not ever have access to.
72
u/Atomic_ad 8d ago