CDR: Re: Nader

[Tim May]

At 9:40 PM -0800 11/2/00, Ray Dillinger wrote:
>On Thu, 2 Nov 2000, Tim May wrote:
>
>>>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.
>>
>>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.
>
>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.

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.


--Tim May

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