Donald Trump is rich because his dad was rich

This article is really poorly written in order to paint Trump in the worst light possible.

First, Donald Trump's dad died in 1999. The article is calculating as if he received 1/5th of his father's estate in 1974. Furthermore, even if he had received his share of the estate in 1974 and invested it entirely in index funds, Trump outperformed that by all estimates (as seen in the graph in the article).

Second, the article ignores all taxes and expenses explicitly. The article states that it assumes that Trump "reinvest all dividends, not cash out and have to pay capital gains, and pay nothing in investment fees." This is a ridiculous assumption -- everyone is going to have expenses. Everyone is going to get taxed on it at some point. With more reasonable assumptions, Trump trumps the SP500 further.

Third, even if Trump wanted to invest his entire net worth into indexes, it wouldn't be possible. I can guarantee you that it would have been very hard to liquidate his entire estate and invest into indexes.

You can say that Donald Trump became rich because he came from a rich family, but this article goes out of its way to make outlandish assumptions to make him look bad.

I'm not a fan of Trump by any stretch, but this article is a joke. You can take any sum any person rich or poor inherited 40 years ago, say "if you had invested in the Vanguard index fund and didn't spend a penny", and make them sound average or below average. It applies to 99% of the population. It's a meaningless attack.

It would be more accurate to compare someone with an advantage such as Trump had, to people who had the same or similar advantage but never were able to achieve as much "fame and fortune". By the way he could have also gambled away and lost that fortune (and in fact he went bankrupt and came back later on as everyone knows actually).

After all when there is an story about a sports star who is particularly gifted, you don't see other articles talking about that "they are great at basketball because they were born 7 foot tall". Or about Tiger Woods "he is great only because his father took the time to train him from a young age". Credit goes to people who take advantage of what they have. It's obvious that not everyone or close to everyone born with a distinct advantage has achieved notoriety or excelled. Sometimes that is even a negative. I often take issue with Bill Gates being born into advantage myself, but the truth is many people with the same advantage never would have ended up a billionaire so yes credit is due vs. the competition or peers you might say.

No doubt that going to Harvard has helped Gates, PG, Zuckerberg and a host of others. But the truth is most Harvard Grads don't end up where they did so yes they deserve credit and not whining from the less fortunate.

And Jeb Bush (the immediate beneficiary of these attacks) was rich and governor of Florida because his dad was Vice President.

I am sure Trump paid estate tax on that $40 million.

In any case, he used the money to get wealth and fame. It was clearly his goal to get fame, and that would not have been achieved by buying index funds.

Which is quite a feat, since 70% of Rich Families Lose Their Wealth by the Second Generation. http://time.com/money/3925308/rich-families-lose-wealth/

Clearly, the guy can manage. That's more than any profesionnal politician can say!