by Orlando Rodriguez
Arturo Moreno
The Forbes list of the 400 richest people in the U.S. has only two Latinos. They are Eduardo Saverin (#356), of Facebook fame, and Arturo Moreno (#385), owner of the Anaheim Angels baseball team. But there are over over 50 million Latinos in the U.S. This means that there is only one really rich Latino for every 25 million not rich Latinos. Why don’t we have more Latinos with lots and lots of money?
Most of the people on the Forbes list have a college education but education alone does not guarantee a spot among the top 400 richest. To become rich you have to own something others want and are willing to pay for. That big something usually creates lots of jobs. Latinos work hard at jobs that we do for others, but we have not been good at creating jobs. We have not been entrepreneurial, except for small businesses like bodegas and restaurants that use low-skilled labor. We have not created businesses that employ hundreds making expensive products or services that lots of people want.
Alex Meruelo
Latinos can become rich business owners. Just look at Alex Meruelo, who is the son of Cuban immigrants and the future majority owner of the Atlanta Hawks basketball team. As a kid, he loved playing basketball but left the sport to run the family tuxedo business, which he developed into the Meruelo Group.
Latinos suffer politically because of this lack of big business know-how. Many of the super rich are large contributors to the political parties, but Latinos are absent from this hidden political influence. We do not have the money to be politically connected. For this reason, Latinos should not view wealth as a sin but as a way of getting political influence.
Many Latinos with college educations have chosen careers in government or universities because of historical discrimination by businesses. If you become a professor, you may now?and?then change how a student feels about Latinos. But you will not change Congress. If you work for state or federal government, you may now?and?then work on a project that benefits Latinos. But politicians pick those projects. If you really want to change what happens in Congress, you must have enough money to influence who gets elected to Congress.
Latino children should be encouraged to dream of inventing a new technology or medical cure that will create many new jobs and earn a lot of money. Like it or not; good or bad; that’s the way America works. And I just became a big fan of the Atlanta Hawks even though I live in Connecticut.
To learn more about Orlando, visit his Bio Page.
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Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed in this article are solely those of
the author and should not be understood to be shared by Being Latino, Inc.
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[...] unshakable religious faith. Other writers have pointed out that Latinos often believe that becoming rich is a sin. For better or worse, that mindset doesn’t afflict innovators like Bill Gates or Mark [...]