# Who has made the most $ with the least talent? **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [March 17, 2019, 5:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-has-made-the-most-with-the-least-talent/831268 "2019-03-17T17:12:09Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 11\ **Page:** 4
**Author:** ![BobLibDem](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/boblibdem/32/3149_2.png) [@BobLibDem](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BobLibDem)\ **Post date:** [March 24, 2019, 12:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-has-made-the-most-with-the-least-talent/831268/61 "2019-03-24T12:44:09Z")
There’s a certain orange-skinned fellow in DC with the initials DJT. Great at marketing his name, but a miserable failure at every business he ever ran. I agree about Olivia Jade. She’s famous and made good money at- I don’t know, being famous? I feel a little bad for her mom, spending all that money and now risking jail to bribe Olivia’s way into a college that she doesn’t give a flying fuck about attending. Now Olivia is pissed at her mother for her loss of revenue. I think this spoiled bitch needs a good spanking. Paris and the Kardashians, of course. Honey Boo Boo and the whole Boo Boo clan. All of them are going to spend their golden years driving motorized shopping carts at Walmart. Jenny McCarthy is famous for being good at… I have no idea. ---
**Author:** ![Razncain](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/9d8465/32.png) [@Razncain](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Razncain)\ **Post date:** [March 24, 2019, 1:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-has-made-the-most-with-the-least-talent/831268/62 "2019-03-24T13:36:37Z")
> [@BobLibDem](#): > > There’s a certain orange-skinned fellow in DC with the initials DJT. Great at marketing his name, but a miserable failure at every business he ever ran. Yep, but since he was a millionaire at 3, multi-millionaire at 19, and inherited between 50-200 million by some estimates, which nobody knows for sure, but inheritance played the biggest role with him. Probably best example of how far a con man can go, but without that inheritance, I seriously doubt we’d ever had heard of him. ---
**Author:** ![Razncain](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/9d8465/32.png) [@Razncain](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Razncain)\ **Post date:** [March 24, 2019, 1:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-has-made-the-most-with-the-least-talent/831268/63 "2019-03-24T13:39:55Z")
Certain occupations pay far more than what they deserve without bringing any talent. There are so many that make it through looks alone, and just average or even less than average intelligence will do. You probably get more bang for your buck with just that. Which is why I’ve had to work my tail off. 🙂 Second to that is just selling bullshit, which I suppose is a certain talent, certainly more to that than just relying on looks alone. Marketeers high on that list, but nobody packages it better than preachers, even more so the televangelists and prosperity preachers. Kenneth Copeland is worth almost a billion dollars. Rick Warren, Joel Esteen, all are doing quite well, and exactly what is their talent? Selling and packaging bullshit to the ignorant and gullible masses of which are in large supply. Sean Hannity is in a league of his own, never seen such a popular, ignorant, no-talent, ass kissing Trump hack who brings absolutely nothing to the table. How this stupid som’ bitch is still on the air is nothing short of requiring divine intervention. ---
**Author:** ![Cheesesteak](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cheesesteak/32/3694_2.png) [@Cheesesteak](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cheesesteak)\ **Post date:** [March 25, 2019, 11:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-has-made-the-most-with-the-least-talent/831268/64 "2019-03-25T11:49:41Z")
I’m going with Kylie Jenner, not due to her being bereft of talent, but due to the extraordinary amount of money she has earned. A billion dollars. Bill Gates is worth more, but has spent decades directing the development of product, navigating a changing business environment, dealing with worldwide competition on multiple fronts. Anyone worth the amount of money Jenner is, has worked for a long time to get it. It takes talent to earn money and keep earning for a long time. Anyone who just “fell into” their money with zero talent, has made a small fraction of what she has earned, and likely aren’t making any more. Jenner has earned a crazy sum of money in a crazy short time, and doesn’t appear to have done anything particularly innovative in her field. I’m sure she’s got some talent, marketing skill and business acumen, but a billion dollars is a shocking amount to earn from marketing skill. ---
**Author:** ![Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/e8c25b/32.png) [@Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Really_Not_All_That_Bright)\ **Post date:** [March 25, 2019, 3:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-has-made-the-most-with-the-least-talent/831268/65 "2019-03-25T15:00:21Z")
> [@Mangosteen](#): > > Here to second the motion that Stern is a HUGE talent and worth every penny he has earned. Millions upon millions of people have listened to his show over the last, what, 40 years. And if people weren’t being entertained by him, he wouldn’t on the air. Sure he has plenty of haters, but these are people who never became regular listeners or even never hear the show at all. Howard and his millions of listeners through the years don’t care about these people. They are free to turn the dial and listen to some wannabe. Actually, this is backwards. People who hate Stern are what drives his show’s popularity and earnings. Infinity Broadcasting’s research showed that people who hated the show listened for longer and more regularly than fans. > [@eschereal](#): > > Not sure why. He _allegedly_ wrote Altair BASIC in a day and a half, though I am skeptical. His primary skill has been as a huckster who had a major lucky turn. I am not seeing much in the way of real talent anywhere near proportional to his wealth. Steve Jobs may have been slightly more talented, but mostly as a showman. Gates’ genius was getting IBM to license DOS instead of buying it outright. He basically tricked them into making him a trillionnaire. > [@dorvann](#): > > As a pro wrestling fan I’d nominate Sid Vicious(the wrestler not the musician) to this list. He was 6 feet 8 inches and weighed 300 pounds; he had the stereo-typical heavy muscled bodybuilder that a lot of wrestling promoters liked. Except he couldn’t cut a promo and he had very limited in-ring ability. Bah. Sid was a lot better than most of the Big Guys that WWE/F was using in the 1980s and 1990s. I’d certainly much rather watch him than Kevin Nash (who made far more money). I’d rather watch a million Sid matches than one Hulk Hogan match (seriously, Hogan had three moves and Sid is the guy you complain about)? Most super-heavyweights aren’t going to land a corkscrew plancha, and that’s fine. Besides, Sid’s terrible promos were hilarious. “I have half a brain!” ---
**Author:** ![bump](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/7c8e57/32.png) [@bump](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bump)\ **Post date:** [March 25, 2019, 3:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-has-made-the-most-with-the-least-talent/831268/66 "2019-03-25T15:34:19Z")
> [@dorvann](#): > > I think the people criticizing Stern and Limbaugh really need to listen to the attempts others have made to emulate them and failed. They both are extremely charismatic and are naturally quick-witted; there is hardly ever any dead air on their shows. As someone who is **neither** charismatic and quick-witted I definitely can tell you it takes some level of talent for what they do so I don’t think either of them would qualify for this list. Yeah, I was thinking that if Llama is saying Limbaugh isn’t talented, then he clearly hasn’t ever listened to some of the OTHER conservative radio hosts. Mark Levin, for example, makes Limbaugh seem insanely good. The guy’s got a knack for being provocative and entertaining at the same time- HE is a large part of why conservative talk radio became a ‘thing’ back in the early 1990s, not the other way around. As for my answer to the OP, I’d say it would have to be one of the mid-range Kardashian sisters (Courtney/Khloe). Kim, at least, had her sex tape and parlayed that into her current marriage and career. Kendall Jenner is at least a model in her own right. But the other sisters? They’re totally fame leeches from their sisters. They’re literally famous for being _near_ famous people. I mean, at least reality TV stars like the Honey Boo-Boo people had their own shows. The middle Kardashian sisters didn’t even have that in their own right- they were supporting parts in their sisters’, father’s and mother’s show. ---
**Author:** ![DCnDC](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dcndc/32/2842_2.png) [@DCnDC](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DCnDC)\ **Post date:** [March 26, 2019, 1:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-has-made-the-most-with-the-least-talent/831268/67 "2019-03-26T13:04:42Z")
Tyler Perry ---
**Author:** ![Annie-Xmas](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/ecc23a/32.png) [@Annie-Xmas](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Annie-Xmas)\ **Post date:** [March 26, 2019, 2:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-has-made-the-most-with-the-least-talent/831268/68 "2019-03-26T14:03:52Z")
Mary Higgins Clark. Every book she has written has the same basic plot: A person’s past comes back to haunt them. That lady is the Queen of Recycling and Rewriting. ---
**Author:** ![RickJay](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/bb73d2/32.png) [@RickJay](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RickJay)\ **Post date:** [March 26, 2019, 2:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-has-made-the-most-with-the-least-talent/831268/69 "2019-03-26T14:33:12Z")
> [@Cheesesteak](#): > > I’m going with Kylie Jenner, not due to her being bereft of talent, but due to the extraordinary amount of money she has earned. A billion dollars. Jenner is in many ways like a Bitcoin millionaire. Her skill is being an “influencer,” a skill that would have been worthless six years ago and will probably be worthless again very soon, and which would be worth far less to anyone not in her family. She happened to try it out at the one time in human history it could make you rich. Bitcoin millionaires all think they’re business geniuses too. They were just lucky. ---
**Author:** ![Stuntman\_Mike](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/stuntman_mike/32/334_2.png) [@Stuntman\_Mike](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Stuntman_Mike)\ **Post date:** [March 26, 2019, 2:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-has-made-the-most-with-the-least-talent/831268/70 "2019-03-26T14:34:33Z")
Vanna White… end thread. ---
**Author:** ![Jackmannii](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jackmannii/32/311_2.png) [@Jackmannii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jackmannii)\ **Post date:** [March 26, 2019, 2:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-has-made-the-most-with-the-least-talent/831268/71 "2019-03-26T14:36:50Z")
> [@Dinsdale](#): > > the Kardashians Immediately came to mind. Also Ed McMahon. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-has-made-the-most-with-the-least-talent/831268.md?page=3)