If you have time to watch an entire movie online, check out the movie “Born Rich.” (above, or link here). It’s relevant to my last post about money or love. The documentary was made by Jamie Johnson, an heir to the Johnson and Johnson fortune. The filmmaker poses the question of what one does with one’s life when one doesn’t have to work. He interviews the children of truly wealthy people to learn about how they view their inherited fortunes. His interviewees include Ivanka Trump (Trump), Josiah Hornblower (Vanderbilt family), Georgina Bloomberg (Bloomberg), Luke Weil (Autotote Gaming), etc.
I thought the documentary was insightful. Instead of going the Paris Hilton/Kim Kardashian route, this documentary asked deeper questions about the meaning of life, as well as the meaning of money.
I’ve looked around the blogosphere, and I’ve seen lots of people condemning these rich kids, writing about them as if their problems are not real, as if only financial problems count as real problems. I agree with Ivanka Trump–these people are naive. Rich people face different issues from the rest of us. It doesn’t make their lives any easier. Sure, they get to vacation in cool places, and they don’t have to worry about a landlord kicking them out. Basic necessities are guaranteed. Their parents don’t worry about having enough money to put food on the table. College tuition is paid in full; no one worries about scholarships because Mom or Dad can afford to pay in cash.
But there’s another side to many of these rich families. Many of these parents care more about getting their name on the side of a building than spending time with their kids. Money is a weapon used to control kids, the same way employers control employees. Business associates often come before family. Some rich parents are just as abusive as poor parents, and they are more likely to get away with it since money and social standing gives them control over the society that would condemn them. Remember the father of the suicide victim from the Dead Poets Society?
When people say that these kids are spoiled, they’re correct. Still, I think it’s instructive to think about experiences. When Luke Weil talks about getting cut off, people need to remember inheritance has been a topic of conversation since he was a kid. Luke expects it because he’s surrounded by it. When a poor child or middle class child sees his parents constantly struggling to survive, he picks up those skills, along with those fears. A rich kid is more likely to see his family struggling over which friends to trust and what business people to get involved with, and he picks up those skills, along with those fears. Rich kids don’t learn to hustle for a buck because they don’t see it around them. Sure, in a sense they’re “spoiled,” but to throw them out of the house and to expect them to suddenly fend for themselves is like taking a guy who has lived all his life in Hawaii and sticking him in the North Pole. The adjustment isn’t easy.
Anyway, check out the video above.
Related posts:
But here is an...
I agree with everything you said. About #1…I think...
Haha, this is one of those useless comments with no explanation. But your last paragraph is badly flawed. I do not agree! Okay, goodnight!
Struggling with which friends to trust, not anywhere near struggling to find place to hide where a rival faction might shoot you in the Congo.
Being rich is not all peaches and cream but I don’t see anyone of them giving up the money so they don’t have their rich “problems” (I am sure you could find some person but very few).
nope, I don’t feel sorry for them.
oh and no post about that Cove movie? Animal rights hollywood activists telling Japanese fisherman not to kill the Dolphins because they are cute? (honestly I don’t want the dolphins killed either but I wouldn’t be so melodramitc about it, when will a bollywood star come here to tells, “um hands off the cows”?)
Byron, it’s one thing to look for everyone’s “humanity” but you’re REEEEEAALLY stretching by claiming the rich “have” problems. Avoiding boredom and staying in your parents good graces are NOT problems. Hoe many of these congenital morons are actually ever cut off? None that I know of. How many of them contribute to society?
None!
Your altruism has gone horribly awry. Save it for people who have EARNED it. These empty nothings haven’t.
Hey now, the pampered children of the obscenely filthy rich are people too. They have problems just like everybody else. I feel their pain. Sob.
In other news, here is another interesting phenomena that has developed in these hard economic times: Hipsters on Food Stamps!
http://www.lewrockwell.com/spl2/hipsters-on-food-stamps.html
Not only do hipsters now qualify for food stamps but they are allowed to use it on essential foodstuffs like wild-caught fish, organic asparagus and triple-crème cheese.
Thanks for the link Byron. I’ll have to check this out.
Haha! I wasn’t expecting this opinion to be all that popular, and I was right!
Enjoy the link, Eric. It’s a good movie. Larry, great link. Lingyai and N.O., good observations! mT, good night!
It’s on Netflix instant view right now. Really enjoyed it, especially the Johnson and Johnson heir and the Vanderbilt heir. The lead guy was great as well, and his talking about how his grandfather already achieved the American dream and how he’s living after it was interesting insight. Some of these guys are so slimy though, living so far off the charts that they almost assume supernatural status, all while trying to be indispensable their whole lives. Sucks! Neat find thanks again.
Cool! I think it’s a subculture like any other–well, maybe not quite like any other, but a subculture nonetheless. I also thought the J and J heir and the Vanderbuilt heir were the most interesting.
44Lopan posted this article… it’s a good read:
http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2011/04/secret-fears-of-the-super-rich/8419/1/
But yeah, even though the rich have “problems”, it’s hard for me to empathize… especially when the kids I work have it much, much, worst.
Gar,
I couldn’t pose the question to Neutral Observer (he would’ve accused me of all kinds of bad things
), but I do think this is a REALLY important topic, and so I’d like to examine it a bit if it’s okay with you. You wrote:
Alright, so HOW do you know they have it worse, let alone “much, much” worse? How do you define “worse?” The reason I ask is that I work with poor people AND rich people, and I agree with Ivanka that the problems tend to be different.
Neutral Observer suggested above that the rich never disown their young, but he’s 100% wrong–Warren Buffett’s granddaughter was “fired” for appearing in the movie above, and Paris Hilton at one point (and maybe now) was cut off entirely. It happens all the time (I don’t know the personal situations of Buffett’s granddaughter or Hilton, but disowned children seem to be common). I’ve said it before, but when parents are rich, money is often part of their identity, and firing a son or daughter is like selling an underperforming stock. It’s like, “You won’t do what I say? Fine, you’re not my daughter. Fuck you because you’re dead to me. Next!!!”
Check out the story of J Paul Getty III:
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/08/world/europe/08gettyobit.html
So this kid gets kidnapped because he’s rich, the kidnappers cut off his ear, his parents don’t have enough money to pay the ransom, and his grandfather, the oil barron who was once the richest man in the world, doesn’t want to part with his money. Eventually he negotiated the ransom down, but decisions were made based on the U.S. tax code and the size of his tax deduction.
So Getty I paid the ransom based on what was tax deductible. Everything else was a business deal at 4% interest (which I guess was cheap…but still). I read another report that said his grandfather was so angry at having to pay that he too fired his grandson, and they never spoke again.
Getting away from Getty, let’s compare two hypotheticals:
1. A poor guy works a menial job, can’t make ends meet, has supervisors who crap on him. He’s pissed at life because he hasn’t been succeeding, so he goes home, drinks vodka, and beats the crap out of his son. The son learns to fend for himself because his father is a failure. The son has no recourse to the beatings because the family is poor and he doesn’t want the family split up. Everyone thinks his dad is a good for nothing loaf, so he can’t wait to get out of the house to see what he can do.
2. A rich guy works as a CEO, he CAN make ends meet, he doesn’t have a supervisor, but he gets pissed off at times, so he goes home, drinks Johnny Walker, and beats the crap out of his son. The son learns dependence because the father treats him as a menial employee, controlling the son’s entire social sphere and micromanaging (or having advisors who micromanage) his life. The son has no recourse to the beatings because the father knows the mayor, serves on the board of his private school, has a street named after him, and has the power to make the boy’s life hell if anyone finds out. Plus, the boy has always been told that his father is a good guy since the world kisses the asses of rich people. Who is he to think otherwise?
Which is worse?
I think #2 is pretty bad–maybe worse, depending on the case. In #1, the father is an asshole because he’s a person beset by his own failed aspirations. In #2, the father simply chose money and social relations over his own children.
I think I have to agree with most here, in that by our standards these kids have no problems. However, just to play devil’s advocate, I also realize that everything is relative. To these kids, staying “in the will” is just as real as us feeling like we need to keep our jobs.
I’ll put it in a different context, remember when you were a kid? Ever have to give a report in school? Remember that feeling of dread, the butterflies in your stomach? The fear of screwing up? How does it compare to the feeling you get today if you make a mistake that could get you fired for at work? By my recollection they’re pretty similar feelings, however, if you asked me to give a report to a room full of third graders today, I’m not sure I’d worry, and I certainly wouldn’t get that same fear I experienced as a kid.
So to be fair to these rich pukes, everything is relative. I share the disdain to think that their fear over which friends to trust could remotely compare to my fear over how I’m going to put my daughter through college, but by the same token, since they don’t have that fear, they have no frame of reference, so for them, it shifts to the things that are real to them.
*shrug* just a different perspective I guess.