If you want to be successful, emulate what the successful do. Study, work hard, invest. If you want to be poor, do the opposite.
It also helps to have a wealthy family and connections to sources of capital.
I have spent a career working directly with, around, and for the 1%, becoming a small fish one myself.....OK, I am more like a 2 or 3 percenter. Successful people lie a lot. Get used to it.
Yes I worked hard. Yes I am smart and well educated. Yes I deferred pleasure. Yes I took risk. BUT the single thing that made me richer than most and more successful than most was getting on the inside with “them”.
Most wealthy I have found are “made men and women”. Bush II and Mittens Romney being examples. Born that way. Married that way. Or taken in as a protege of older rich guys.
Being in equity capital.....I have seen hundreds of real entrepreneurs with ideas abilities and hard work for years have ALL of it taken from them by sharpie bankers, lawyers, and financiers. Hundreds.
The guy with the idea, hard work, ability gets 10%....the money guys get 90%. That is the way Mitt Romney did it.
To some extent, it is like Logan’s Run. Carrousel is mostly show for the clueless.
However.....at the local level. Real estate, shopkeepers, dry cleaners, tradesmen, small biz owners like printers (until the internet age), machine shops, construction companies, car dealers (because they are protected from big biz by most state laws, etc a person can become very successful on his own.....but not a mega-millionaire like Romney or Buffet.....that takes connections and a rigged game one way or another.
There are anecdotes and exceptions....I am just speaking from my experience. I was and am very fortunate to have been at the right place and time with the correct line of bullshit. Luck is when opportunity meets preparation.
Oh crap...gotta go....more work to do.