ABSTRACT
The accumulation of advantages at the very top parallels the vicious cycle of poverty at the very bottom. Most of the 1950 very rich who are related to the very rich of earlier generations have been born with the big jump already made for them and the accumulation of advantages already firmly in operation. The long crawl comes to a pay-off only if it is transformed into an accumulation of advantages; this transformation is often a result of a merger of companies. The economic careers of the very rich are neither "entrepreneurial" nor "bureaucratic." Moreover, among them, many of those who take on the management of their families' firms are just as "entrepreneurial" or as "bureaucratic" as those who have not enjoyed such inheritance. "Entrepreneur" and "bureaucrat" are middle-class words with middle-class associations and they cannot be stretched to contain the career junctures of the higher economic life in America.
