"Pull yourself up by your bootstraps" and "if I can do it, so can you" are the monetary maxims of billionaires across the country that are as fictitious as Santa Claus. Believing that you're only one idea away from a cool billion has been so deftly interwoven into the American experiment that some gullible Americans strangely draw comfort from the existence of billionaires. Hell, some Americans- that will never achieve the staggering success of billionaires- will vote against their own interests to help the 1% evade taxes. Why would anyone do this? They do it because of the alluring myth of the self-made billionaire.
Without thinking about it, you could probably rattle off the names of ten billionaires right now. A large part of that is tied to the myth of self-made billionaires being so ubiquitous that even people opposed to the concept are wrangled into its web. The YouTube channel Second Thought explains why the self-made billionaire is a joke in the video linked above.
