Survivorship bias is a hell of a drug. And people really look up to the survivors. Thing is most people can’t tell you they will be wealthy before they are :)
Nassim Taleb has something to say on this. The wealth is in the long tails, the Jobs, Gates, etc. If you take the mean income of all people running businesses, then it's probably less than the average worker.
I doubt that. Most businesses hire employees, and they pay them less than the owners pay themselves (as otherwise, what's the point of having a business?).
99% of business owners don't have a hope of hitting it big (at least I hope so, because they never will). It's just that, for them, being an owner of a small plumbing operation and making $200k off of it beats being a plumber in somebody else's operation and making $70k.
