The Daily Beast has just published an intriguing article giving the world 15 signs to check for so you will know for sure -- in advance -- whether you will be rich. Forget factors like hard work and creativity, and certainly stop thinking about the advantages that many people inherit that grant them access to greater capital. No! The Daily Beast has given us the top statistical elements associated with accruing wealth, and stuff like that is not on there. So please -- you can leave the consideration of intangibles to unrealistic people who will never become wealthy. If you can check off enough boxes on this list of signs, you're good. If not, you're screwed. The good news is, for once, things look better for black men statistically in terms of earnings than for any other group -- at least for one item.

Item number nine of the '15 Signs You'll Be Rich' states:

9. Each one-unit increase in a typical young person's body mass index is associated with an 8 percent reduction in wealth.

White females suffer the greatest wealth drop, at 12 percent. For white men, it's only 2 percent, and for African-American women, 7 percent. Weight gain has no impact on net worth for African-American males, according to the study that produced this stat. Obese people "tend to have higher medical costs than others, which cuts into their savings," Zagorsky says. "And some employers are willing to pay more for employees who fit stereotypical beauty models." In any case, "Losing a large amount of weight dramatically improves your wealth over time..."


Unless you're a black man!

It's unclear how to take the revelation. Is this a sign that it's okay for black men to gain as much weight as they want? Or do black men, and black men alone, have the magical power to escape American society's covert demand that all people be as slim as possible, even though most people in our society are creeping towards obesity?

Recently I wrote a fairly controversial article about the fact that job discrimination against black men and women might rise as our population becomes fatter than the rest of America on average, if you compare the relative obesity rates. I argued that as companies continue to cut costs and look for people to lay off, those that are larger might be perceived as a greater risk and might become the first to be let go and the last to be hired. As the obesity problem is worse for us, more blacks might go on the "last hired, first fired" list if employers start to discriminate based on weight.

According to the study cited by the Daily Beasty, 'Health and Wealth: The Late-20th-century Obesity Epidemic in the U.S.,' this is already happening -- but only to black women, white men and white women. Yeah. I think I now understand why people were so mad at me for writing the article I described above. And the reason is this.

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While it's interesting and even useful at times to take in the world from the perspective of statistical analysis, statistics don't readily offer solutions and they don't offer a complete picture. The "average" response to a situation leaves out the essential factor of how the individual actually responds as an individual, not a number. The last time I checked, people started companies and built wealth, not numbers on a page. It's that individual power of creative choice that creates results. And studies such as this one erase the power a person has over her destiny -- well, it doesn't erase it, but it doesn't account for it either. And that would make me mad, too.

Case in point, that last time I checked the richest black person in America is an overweight woman named Oprah Winfrey. Now she might be a special person, putting her outside of the realm of "average," but that is exactly my point. What is special about Oprah is what makes studies such as these less significant than they present themselves to be. There is something special and unique about everyone that no study can measure, and that is your prime wealth-building tool.

Should we ignore studies about the relationship between wealth and weight, along with a host of other "wealth-related" stats? I would not go that far. I do want to offer up the idea that all people, black, white or brown, are more than the sum of their parts. What you do with those parts as a manifestation of your best qualities is the best predictor of wealth around.

But if you really want to see whether the Daily Beast think's you will be rich, go ahead.

(Hint: Better start working on your Russian ancestry.)