Ok, I get it, the richest people aren't necessarily the most educated. 

BUT I have a huge problem when I see that fact so glibly tossed around. It festers and percolates until the unstated assumption made by impressionable young minds is to eschew education entirely. When your reality is one where a high school diploma is a fancy "higher education" degree, and you know that the folks dealing in the black market are making a lot of cash...then it's all to easy to want to cave to the temptation and grab your cut while you can. Live fast and if you're lucky you die young.

This whole article was bullshit.  Here's the main way rich people are different from average people: they inherited money.  It's tempting to focus on a few self-made businesspeople like Warren Buffett, Larry Ellison, or Oprah Winfrey; but the Forbes global billionaires list is mostly inherited wealth.  Even a lot of self-made people came from money: Donald Trump's dad was relatively wealthier than him, Richard Branson is from the minor aristocracy, even Bill Gates's father was a well-to-do lawyer in Seattle.  You know what they say: the easiest way to become a millionaire is to start out as a billionaire.

Also worth reading is this thing Halibutboy stashed:

http://pandawhale.com/post/17925/living-with-less-is-only-for-the-rich

Living with less is only for the rich. The rant explains why. It comes down to risk.

Thanks for pointing me to that post, Adam! I'd seen it, too. Even though most of the list is inherited wealth, if they weren't doing something with it wouldn't it eventually be gone? 

Life is risky business. 

They don't have to do anything.

Someone smarter than them earned it and then put it in a trust where they can't touch it.

The trust is managed by someone who knows what they're doing, and the trust has investments.

The investments earn enough in dividends and capital gains that the original money grows, plus there's enough to pay the manager of the trust and the individuals who are beneficiaries of the trust, without ever depleting the original wealth that was earned.

The wealthy have their own vocabulary so it's hard to know that their capital preservation is bulletproof unless you were already familiar with that vocabulary of legalspeak and financial jargon.