"His worth has fallen to about $4 million from a peak of about $100 million."

[ByLoSellHi]

Quote from makloda:

They start off like every other child in the country: either they have good, hard-working, loving parents or they don't.

The Grant Study focuses on this issue (http://www.amazon.com/Adaptation-Life-George-E-Vaillant/dp/0674004140) and followed individuals from graduating from Harvard college ("fortunate" by any conventional wisdom) from the early 1940s to their death. Surprisingly, a good portion of these "fortunate" men died as pychopaths, poor alcoholics or criminals. Some committed suicide. Other went to win academic prizes or became millionaires.

Vaillant calls "nest warmth during childhood" the single most important determinant for success and health during adulthood. It is completely independent of the parent's social status. Also, it exposes the futility of any government attempts of fixing social inequality on a federal level through transfer payments or God knows what socialist measures.

Saying that the McAfee guy was just lucky is completely ridiculous. Most likely, he was a hard-working guy with tons of entrepreneurial spirit. Tough to imagine how he could have built the company otherwise.

+1

With McAfee, it's more timing and business intuition and management skills, plus organization, hard work and initiative, that put him in his formerly lofty economic position.

Luck surely played a role, as it usually does, but that role was marginal.

 

[Scataphagos]

Let that be a warning to all you ET Millionaire Wannabes....

As soon as you finally "make it", you'll be offing yourself...

Ironic, huh?

 

[Thermactor]

Quote from zdreg:

did his wife leave him?
did she try to throw it in his face by going with a real loser?

Water seeks its own level and finds it.

 

[ASusilovic]

Quote from Debaser82:



Why would you want to become a star banker.

Over here in europe social status is

Gabage man

Prostitute

Banker

Hum...why not the other way around ?

Banker, Prostitute, Garbage Man ?

 

[sprstpd]

Quote from asiaprop:

You still fail to understand how your own country works: What is happening is how actually everyone wants it to be. A country of opportunities, and when you make it to the top you reap great pay, bonuses, perks, and are allowed to shit on the Joe on the street. You are the one who will be provided with free options, if you blow up you come back to the table a year later and try again. Everyone has an equal opportunity to become a star banker or trader. And because nobody wants to destroy such opportunistic society nobody is going to do anything about it, no matter how much you fart and cry and no matter how the press and some mad politicians want it look like. If you dont like it stop paying taxes and get jailed or leave the country and never come back. But stop wining around like a small girl.

Actually the way it is supposed to work is all the idiotic financial entities that were insolvent without government aid should be out of business and leaner/stronger/meaner financial entities would take their place. To reward failure is idiotic.

 

[Humpy]

The irony is that in the free-for-all fight for riches, all will become

battered and the vast majority poor ! The banana republic

situation has been played out many times in South America and Africa. Revolution, civil war etc. ad nauseam.

Principles and integrity stopped the West following suit, but as standards drop ever lower, our general situation will deteriorate too !!