>>Some people with great wealth inherited it.

Actually, I'd argue that MOST people with great wealth have either inherited or married it.
I worked my way through college at some very uppity Long Island country clubs.
With some notable exceptions most of the members were children of members. Most went back several generations. The kids of those members were all going to first rate colleges and were coached by private tutors every step of the way.
The schlubs like me who worked there were hacking our ways thru Nowhere U while working 3 jobs.

If we look at families like the Duponts, the Rockefellers or the Mellons, we find one person who had extraordinary business acumen and then a long list of people enjoying the fruits of that acumen.
The Dupont wealth goes back to the American revolution.


We tend to focus on the likes of Warren Buffet, Bill Gates or Steve Zuckerberg who have wonderful stories, and that's a good thing, but lets face it- most of the kids who went thru Harvard, Yale and Princeton did it with dad's or granddad's money and that gave them a huge leg up on the kids who had to hack it on their own.