Originally Posted by
Trevtassie
If you think the majority of the rich earn all their money by working I've got a tower I'd like to sell you. Mostly they spend their time figuring out how to create money by manipulating the credit system.
At least Bill Gates is smart enough to realise he doesn't need all that money so he's giving a lot of it away through his foundation, probably because he did have to work hard at the start..
Many of them are born rich and managed to simply not lose it all (e.g., Donald Trump, many members of the Walton family), many get rich through financial manipulations that don't feed or house anyone and sometimes actively harm people (e.g., Wall Street types, and esp those who helped collapse the financial markets in 2008), and many of the rich started out with good ideas (in software, hardware, etc) and ended up with monopoly power that rewards them for curtailing production and colluding with (supposed) rivals, manipulating consumer demand, etc. (e.g., pretty much all of the big name tech companies).