Comment by nradov

> Henry Ford himself started from nothing.

Relatively speaking, it would seem Ford was well enough off.

Born in 1863, given a pocket watch at 12 (1875), starting a company at age 40 after some years pottering about as an apprentice machinist before working on steam engines and other "advanced machines".

This is well above "having nothing" for those times - some decades earlier a pocket watch was an extremely high end highly valued prestige item - not so much so when Ford was given one at 12, but absolutely a signifier of "better than nothing"

Working on machines at that time was also a fairly prestige career path, well paid, in demand, not at all like being "just an auto mechanic" might be seen in the 1950s.

Your "just" there is doing a lot of work. Don't trivialize the difficulty of starting a company. Most people who start companies and are successful either have some financial backing or reserves already, or they have very little in the way of other responsibilities (like a spouse, children, or elderly family members) to cause them to think twice about living on ramen for years.

Yes, there are exceptions, as with everything, but this isn't a path to be taken lightly. Your average worker who lost their job due to globalization ends up scrambling to find a job, any job, immediately, or else risk their family living on the street.

Makes you wonder why poor people don’t just start their own companies.