At the crux of this issue is the question about correlation of intelligence and ambition with wealth. I would be surprised if there was no correlation at all, on the other hand it would be interesting to see what the relationship really is but I can't think of an experiment that could be done in a way which would be both accurate and ethical (for example switching poor and rich children at birth).
This seems to be one of the arguments around keeping taxes low for the rich (or "job creators") the implicit assumption seems to be "rich people are smart, therefor they should be put in charge of money distribution".
As an example, there was somebody I grew up with who is now running a ~$1 million turnover web design company at 27.
He is sometimes invited to speak at events as a successful entrepreneur and demonstrated as an example of how hard work can pay off etc.
Unfortunately if you know the real story it is somewhat less impressive. He graduated from university with a fairly average degree and was having trouble finding employment at any job that he was interested in working at. He comes from a wealthy background however, so had little time constraints on his job search. After some time he decided to give up looking for work and establish himself as a freelance designer, his family gave him a chunk of money with which to establish himself.
For the first few years his business was not too successful and was draining capital, he was having difficulty finding clients as his portfolio of work was not really comparable to other established companies who were charging similar rates.
After a few years his family sold one of the businesses they owned which freed up a bunch of extra capital, a chunk of this they gave to him. He was able to use this money to hire some talented designers who did excellent work and won him a bunch of awards and bigger contracts, this was really the catalyst that made him successful.
Of course if the guy was a complete idiot he would have squandered even that opportunity, he was intelligent enough to run a business day-to-day but there was no way he would have managed that without such a capital injection. Would be interesting to think about how many people in his position would have failed and how many would have been successful earlier.
This seems to be one of the arguments around keeping taxes low for the rich (or "job creators") the implicit assumption seems to be "rich people are smart, therefor they should be put in charge of money distribution".
As an example, there was somebody I grew up with who is now running a ~$1 million turnover web design company at 27. He is sometimes invited to speak at events as a successful entrepreneur and demonstrated as an example of how hard work can pay off etc.
Unfortunately if you know the real story it is somewhat less impressive. He graduated from university with a fairly average degree and was having trouble finding employment at any job that he was interested in working at. He comes from a wealthy background however, so had little time constraints on his job search. After some time he decided to give up looking for work and establish himself as a freelance designer, his family gave him a chunk of money with which to establish himself.
For the first few years his business was not too successful and was draining capital, he was having difficulty finding clients as his portfolio of work was not really comparable to other established companies who were charging similar rates.
After a few years his family sold one of the businesses they owned which freed up a bunch of extra capital, a chunk of this they gave to him. He was able to use this money to hire some talented designers who did excellent work and won him a bunch of awards and bigger contracts, this was really the catalyst that made him successful.
Of course if the guy was a complete idiot he would have squandered even that opportunity, he was intelligent enough to run a business day-to-day but there was no way he would have managed that without such a capital injection. Would be interesting to think about how many people in his position would have failed and how many would have been successful earlier.