Forbes Made “Self-Made” Meaningless

No One on the Forbes 400 is “Self-Made”. Not even Oprah.

Seattle City Council from Seattle, CC BY 2.0

The Forbes 400 illustrates two old truths about getting rich:

1. It takes money to make money.
2. It’s not what you know, it’s who you know.

According to Forbes, 2021’s ten richest people deserve an 8 or higher “self-made” rating using The Forbes 400 Ten-Point Self-Made Score, but the very first example shows the rating is a farce.

1. Jeff Bezos gets a “self-made” score of 8. Forbes doesn’t mention that he borrowed $250,000 from his mom and dad to start Amazon. Forbes provides a revealing quote: Bezos said, “I didn’t think I’d regret trying and failing. And I suspected I would always be haunted by a decision to not try at all.” It is easy for the rich to try — they know that when they fail, they’re still rich. This is why entrepreneurship is greater in Nordic countries than in the US. Social democracies provide a safety net that lets their citizens know that if they try and fail, they will survive to try again.
2. Elon Musk also gets an 8. Forbes doesn’t mention that his dad owned half of an emerald mine.
3. Mark Zuckerberg, 8. His folks were a psychiatrist and a dentist who sent him to two of the country’s most expensive and prestigious schools…