Is there a correlation between self-employment and wealth?
In a well-managed company, employees bring more dollars to their employers than the employers pay the employees (salary and benefits).  Employees trade potential reward for security (a regular paycheck).  Employers take on the risk of needing to meet payroll and profit from the company's income, minus expenses. The potential rewards are much higher as an employer (self or otherwise), so the ones that do make it do quite well.  But this is also consistent with your other statement that the reverse is not true; the risk of self-employment is high, and many self-employed people don't become millionaires. If you could find a breakdown, I suspect that it would show not just that they are self employed but own their own company. There are many people that are self employed, many of them make a good living at it, but are not millionaires.  My neighbour the plumber is a perfect example of this sort of self-employed and comfortable but not rich person. The key to wealth growth is to own (a significant part of) a company.  It one way to leverage a smaller amount of money to something much larger.  Plough your profits back in to the company to grow it, pay yourself reasonably for some time as the company grows.  After it is some size, you can afford to pay yourself more of the profits, if not sell it as a going concern to someone else. One last thought - I am assuming that your book is claiming that they made their money through self-employment, instead of choosing to become self employed  after striking rich somewhere.  If I were to win the lottery, I might then become a self-employed something, but in that case it was not my self-employment that got me there. The key to becoming wealthy as a self-employed person is the drive to be successful. A driven person, who starts their own company (or companies, should they fail), will find success. Assuming that you define success as the accumulation of wealth, then yes, self-employment is correlated with wealth. But as matt mentions in the comments, there is no casual (in the statistical sense) relationship between self-employment and wealth. While I can't say for sure, I would argue that drive is more important that the employment situation. Many studies show that the wealthiest households are self employed and small business owners. But there is significant risk associated, and so the wealth cannot really be enjoyed.
Beyond the numbers, how do you objectively establish causation between Amazon and a lost job?  That, to me, is what is practically impossible.  Ma and Pa might blame Amazon but that's hardly dependable information.  What if Ma and Pa's business model was unsustainable or simply mismanaged?  Now, with Walmart, you can establish a stronger connection because you'll see those effects tightly correlated with a local store opening.  Doing that with an online business is considerably harder.  You'd need to know who the customers were and how they substituted Ma and Pa's goods and then correlate that with a drop in sales, for example. If you have self-employment income you can open a Solo 401k.  Your question is unclear as to what your employment status is.  If you are self-employed as an independent contractor, you can open a Solo 401k.  You can still do this even if you also earn non-self-employment income (i.e., you are an employee and receive a W-2).  However, the limits for contributions to a Solo 401k are based on your self-mployment income, not your total income, so if you have only a small amount of self-employment income, you won't be able to contribute much to the Solo 401k.  You may be able to reduce your taxes somewhat, but it's not like you can earn $1000 of self-employment income, open a Solo 401k, and dump $5000 into it; the limits don't work that way. One can have a self-directed IRA. This is not like a Schwab, eTrade, etc IRA. It has a special type of custodian that knows how to manage it.  I became aware of such an account as a way to purchase a rental property. There were two issues. The type of property I looked at wasn't anything a bank was willing to finance. And the rules regarding self dealing added a potential layer of expense as I technically could not perform the simplest of things for the property.  For you, the obstacle looks like self-dealing. Any IRA can only be funded with cash or transfer/conversion from another IRA/401(k). I don't know how you would get the intelligent property into the IRA in the first place. Once you own a patent, or anything else, you can't sell it into the IRA.  It's at times like this that member littleadv would suggest this is the time to talk to a pro before you do anything hazardous to your wealth. "It's not well-defined, since the [term ""middle class""](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Middle_class) has been used in *dramatically* different ways.  However:  &gt;The modern sociological usage of the term ""middle class"", however, dates to the 1911 UK Registrar-General's report, in which the statistician T.H.C. Stevenson identified the middle class as that falling between the upper class and the working class. Included as belonging to the middle class are professionals, managers, and senior civil servants. The chief defining characteristic of membership in the middle class is possession of significant human capital. &gt; &gt;Within capitalism, middle class initially referred to the bourgeoisie and petite bourgeoisie. However, with the immiserisation and proletarianisation of much of the petit bourgeois world, and the growth of finance capitalism, middle class came to refer to the combination of labour aristocracy, professionals and white collar workers. &gt; &gt;The size of the middle class depends on how it is defined, whether by education, wealth, environment of upbringing, social network, manners or values, etc. These are all related, though far from deterministically dependent. The following factors are often ascribed in modern usage to a ""middle class"":[by whom?] &gt; &gt;    Achievement of tertiary education. &gt; &gt;    Holding professional qualifications, including academics, lawyers, chartered engineers, politicians and doctors regardless of their leisure or wealth. &gt; &gt;* Belief in bourgeois values, such as high rates of house ownership and jobs which are perceived to be ""secure"". &gt; &gt;* Lifestyle. In the United Kingdom, social status has historically been linked less directly to wealth than in the United States,[4] and has also been judged by pointers such as accent, manners, place of education, occupation and the class of a person's family, circle of friends and acquaintances.[5][6] &gt; &gt;* Cultural identification. Often in the United States, the middle class are the most eager participants in pop culture whereas the reverse is true in Britain.[7]  The highest income professionals in the United States are IIRC neurosurgeons, which average ~$400k, so that's probably about as far as the middle class can extend.  Then there's the [upper class](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Upper_class):  &gt;The main distinguishing feature of upper class is its ability to derive enormous incomes from wealth through techniques such as investment and money management, rather than engaging in wage-labor or salaried employment.[4][5][6] Successful entrepreneurs, CEOs, politicians, investment bankers, some lawyers and top flight physicians, heirs to fortunes, successful venture capitalists, stockbrokers as well as most celebrities are considered members of this class by contemporary sociologists, such as James Henslin or Dennis Gilbert.[4] There may be prestige differences between different upper-class households. An A-list actor, for example, might not be accorded as much prestige as a former U.S. President,[5] yet all members of this class are so influential and wealthy as to be considered members of the upper class.[4]  The [working class](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lower_class):  &gt;As with many terms describing social class, working class is defined and used in many different ways. When used non-academically, it typically refers to a section of society dependent on physical labor, especially when compensated with an hourly wage. Its use in academic discourse is contentious, especially following the decline of manual labor in postindustrial societies.  And the [underclass](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Underclass) or poor:  &gt;The underclass is located by a collection of identifying characteristics, such as high levels of joblessness, out-of-wedlock births, female-headed households, crime, violence, substance abuse, and high school dropout rates. The underclass harbors these traits to a greater degree than the general population, and other classes more specifically.  Obviously, it's all a set of essentially arbitrary and artificial lines to draw; we don't have a true class system (as existed in the Middle Ages, where there were real legal distinctions between members of the clergy, the nobility, and the peasants, or as happened under India's caste system)." "Even the Wall Street jobs require skill, knowing how the stock market work, knowing how people work, etc.   Even saying ""that luck is the main factor in the majority of cases of great wealth"" is still wrong.   Really the only time luck is the real reason is non skill based gambling games (lottery, slots, etc), inheritance, and finding a wallet on the side of the road/street" "This is a great data find. I've been trying to explain to my friends for years that outsizes corporate profits have been caused by outsized corporate leverage but they never believe me (and never bother picking up a 10-K either).  I do, however have an issue with this statement:  &gt;If corporations really are people, it's time for them to start acting like people--and sharing their wealth.  I don't know that many people who actively ""share"" their wealth. My parents have always seemed much more concerned about saving for retirement and college than they did about ""sharing"" their wealth with others. To somehow imply that sharing wealth is the natural human thing to do is a bit presumptuous." Bad bad analogies.  No offense sorry, I make bad analogies too.  Tinkering with income inequality will not get in the way of overall wealth creation.  Go check out the income gap of the US vs any other industrialized nation.  Many have lower debt and lower unemployment than we do now, and have a lower income gap, which is caused by laws set up by society, not by some magical force.  People think it is just natural that some countries have a higher income gap than others.    It actually is NOT fact that increasing everyone's wealth helps society more.  if you look up any study done that measures happiness in a society, it shows many countries have happier people than the US does.  The US has more crime, mental illness, etc. than any other industrialized country.  if wealth creation were the solution to our problems, why isn't the US even keeping up with other countries when it comes to measurements that involve a society's success?    The key is that wealth creation only helps a society to a certain point, beyond that it doesn't make people happier.  When you said 'helps society more', you obviously meant people in it being happy, right?  having iPhones doesn't 'help society more' if everyone is miserable.  Anyway, once you get to where basic needs are met, more wealth doesn't really make people any happier.  But there is a mountain of evidence that a high income gap makes people miserable. This is basically saying that it's not possible to make more than some not-so-large amount without taking for yourself part of what several other people produce, yes?  How does that fit with the very high profits per a employee numbers that some companies have?: http://www.bloomberg.com/visual-data/best-and-worst/most-profitable-employees-companies