-- > > > > no matter how good you are. You can get rich enough to live > > > > off your investments, sure -- but reaching the billionaire > > > > league is a multi generational project. Tim May: > > > This is not true. Most billionaires in the United States did it > > > in a single generation. On the Fortune list of billionaires, > > > most made the money by starting companies. Only a handful are > > > heirs. Ray Dillinger: > > Most of them come from well-to-do families rather than filthy rich > > families, that's true. But few or none come from blue collar or > > really poor families. Tim May: > Of three billionaires I can think of off-hand, all came from poor > families. > > For example, Gordon Moore of Intel. Grew up in a fishing village, > Pescadero, halfway between Santa Cruz and San Francisco. Modest > means. > > (And his partner in forming Intel, Bob Noyce, now deceased, grew up > on a farm in Iowa.) > > For example, Larry Ellison of Oracle. Grew up dirt poor in the > midwest (Chicago, I believe, or some city similar to Chicago). > > These are two out of the top 5. > > Add to this Jim Bidzos, a near-billionaire from his Verisign > holdings alone. Poor, enlisted in Marines, etc. And there's the guy > who hired me into Intel in 1974, a poor kid from the poor side of > the tracks, name of Craig Barrett. Now CEO of Intel and worth > several hundred millions. > > (Oh, and Andy Grove, Hungarian refugee, arriving penniless in > 1956-7.) > > And look to Warren Buffet, Sam Walton, and a slew of others. > > I'd say your "few or none" point has been decisively disproved by > example. The book "the millionaire next door" does provides plausible evidence that in their origins, millionaires are close to being a cross section of America. --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG 5reu3NKJr/NkOIGpX2fmomv+eNbVe5MCBbPeruvB 42CMOlug+BOUjmCtHa4RJNdWtkjsmOJj6BZO4cXg7