Every time someone brings up people being self-made the discussion turns into post hoc justification. It seems that we can't simply accept someone's immense success and we must find some excuse for why they made it. Yes, luck and the people around them play a role in any success (and equally, in any failure) and that must be accounted for, but that's not nearly enough to automatically discount the actual person.

I guarantee if a the son of a middle class innkeeper with an absentee father from Greenbow, Alabama became a billionaire people would say he had an advantage because he got to experience a diverse group of people as a kid and had a loving mother who supported him. An orphan living on the streets in an impoverished town in Italy and we'd say not everyone has the opportunity to make their own way when they're only 9 years old.

Shrug.

Majority isn't so much what matters.

The percentage of people with significant inherited wealth who becomes billionaires far exceeds the percentage of people with significant inherited wealth in the general population.

Thus, inheriting wealth has an enormous impact on the likelihood of becoming a billionaire in America.

I wouldn't count Bill Gates entirely self made and so would himself. His parents, his colleagues, and every one around him played a major role in success. If anything, I'd say luck and timing are more important than being nice.

I don't think that is true

Warren Buffet' father was a congressman

Larry Page's father was a professor of computer science at University

Sergey Brin's father was professor of mathematics at University and his mother worked at NASA

these are the first three I looked up and they don't look like low or middle class

A group doesn't have to be the majority to be significant.

Are they self made? They might have made billions, but did they come from wealthy well connected families that or were they self made? Turning a million into a billion is significantly easier than turning a hundred into a billion because it buys you the ability to try without risking your future.

I hate that word, self-made. I think of Bezos, Buffet, Gates and all three of them had investment from their parents or had a business relationship made possible by their parents. Of the billionaires I know of, all them came from at least an upper middle class family. Certainly they are a special kind of talent and a big part of their own success, but they were raised by nurturing families with significant resources.

Ok, we've got:

Jeff Bezos

Bill Gates

Warren Buffett

Mark Zuckerberg

Larry Ellison

Larry Page

Sergey Brin

Michael Bloomberg

Steve Ballmer

Jim Walton

I'll start: Here's my list of the "self-made":

Jeff Bezos, Larry Ellison, Michael Bloomberg (although I don't know how he made partner at Bloomberg at 30). Maybe Steve Ballmer. Page and Brin are special cases; they're the children of university professors.

Define "self-made", that's the real difference of opinion. How many first generation immigrants from truly impoverished nations become billionaires?

> And 9 out of the top 10 American billionaires are self-made.

Is there really such a thing as self-made? I honestly don't believe so. Otherwise, I think more people would do it.