This sounds more like a slogan, a belief, than a fact.

It’s not true for the extreme top end: [0]

Here’s a Yahoo Finance article citing several efforts to investigate inheritance vs self-made wealth in the upper middle class: [1]

We keep electing new politicians and buying the latest and greatest thing. Technology keeps revolutionizing everything.

This leads to a ton of churn at the top as incumbents are replaced.

What may fool you though is that all successful people are similar in important ways (Anna Karenina principle). But they are not the same people.

[0] https://www.chicagobooth.edu/review/billionaires-self-made

[1] https://finance.yahoo.com/news/79-millionaires-self-made-les...

> It’s not true for the extreme top end

Any extreme is, by definition, unusual. You don’t need to be a billionaire (which is what the articule you linked to focus on) to be considered powerful or wealthy.

Tellingly, that articles notes that:

> The proportion of those in the list who grew up poor or had little wealth remained constant at roughly 20 percent throughout the same period.

Which suggests that inheriting power and money does make a difference in your chance of success. They continue:

> Most individuals on the Forbes 400 list did not inherit the family business but rather made their own fortune.

But one does not follow from the other. Inheriting a business is not the only way to have a leg up. If you’re well off you have the opportunity to risk going into some venture on your own and fail, because you have a safety net. Furthermore, your affluent family can and probably will make a difference in your business. I’m reminded of a piece of news a while back where a couple of rich kids were bragging they made their company successful “from scratch” but upon further inspection into it was revealed their customers were rich friends of their parents.

There is no self-made wealth. You can't become wealthy without the labour of other people.

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2024/apr/03/all-billion...

The article you linked was a bit fuzzy, seems they counted people like Thiel and Musk as 'entrepreneurs' rather than inheritance because they didn't keep running a family company. But them being wealthy is absolutely connected to their families being privileged and the nasty, nasty crimes they profited from.