The Poorest Rich Kids in the World | Hacker News Reader

The Poorest Rich Kids in the World

rollingstone.com

41 pointswallflower36 comments

Throughout my life, I've had a larger than average exposure to the children of the very wealthy. What strikes me is that they seem afflicted with the same existential angst that plagues us all from time to time. They wonder what everything means, what the point of doing anything at all, much less something great, truly is. In short, they are always in search of meaning, and never find a final goal in which to place their faith.

The main difference is that for you or I, even if we slip into nihilism, depression, or hedonism for temporary spells, reality always demands our attention. Even mere millions last at most years if truly spent with the abandon the "fuck it all" lifestyle requires. For the children of the very wealthy, they can escape into these distractions for years, possibly forever.

Some of these children manage to claw their way free of the meaningless merry-go-round of booze, drugs, sex, travel, and wild purchases. Anecdotally, the things that seem to assist this process are, in no particular order: a family mythology as found in families such as the Rockefellers, newly discovered religious faith, restrictions upon their finances, a hobby or profession with it's own addictive qualities (such as running, or programming), or a significant other that provides a surrogate middle class mindset.

It's a bizarre situation, but wealth can kill just as surely as it can protect. I don't have the answer here, but if you're fortunate enough to make it big, spend some serious time thinking about how to protect your children and your grandchildren from the downside of your success.

The majority of these stories that I am familiar with could have used the "spend some serious time and personal resources on your kids." Money and outside resources seems a poor substitute for good parental relationships.

I really enjoy the quote from Warren Buffet, who felt the perfect amount to leave children is "enough money so that they would feel they could do anything, but not so much that they could do nothing."

Born Rich

The film was described as "a documentary on children of the insanely rich, directed by one of their own, Johnson & Johnson Inc. heir Jamie Johnson." It consists primarily of Johnson interviewing his friends and peers about the experience of living life free of financial constraints. These interviews are offset by Johnson's exploration of his own experience and family. By the end of the film, Luke Weil became unhappy with his portrayal and sued unsuccessfully.

http://www.hulu.com/watch/174635

Posting a youtube link for those not able to access the hulu link (ie you are no in the US).

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7xhuSxyHWRw

Andrew Carnegie write in his essay "wealth" that excessive inheritances can only be a burden to the heirs. this story certainly demonstrates that.

No, this story demonstrates that an "excessive" inheritance is a burden to a certain set of heirs. It tells us nothing about the effect of "excessive" inheritances on other heirs.

Let's not take sample sizes of one and use them to justify assertions about large groups, shall we?

this superficial cynicism really depresses me

I know so many kids toiling away thinking that "there's only the ladder", that the idea that there's happiness outside of money is some sort of opiate to weed out the less driven. ask people who went to prep schools man, ask rich people themselves. money doesn't make people happy.

People occasionally scoff at "money doesn't buy happiness", but it's an incredibly true statement.

There are homeless people who are objectively happier (and often, healthier) than some of the richest people in the world.

I feel this needs a ridiculously large citation needed. It is trotted out a ton, but I can't help but hear the lyrics from Everclear's "I will buy you a new life"

    I hate those people who love to tell you
    Money is the root of all that kills
    They have never been poor
    They have never had the joy of a welfare christmas

"When plotted against log income, life evaluation rises steadily. Emotional well-being also rises with log income, but there is no further progress beyond an annual income of∼$75,000. Low income exacerbates the emotional pain associated with such misfortunes as divorce, ill health, and being alone. We conclude that high income buys life satisfaction but not happiness, and that low income is associated both with low life evaluation and low emotional well-being."

Daniel Kahneman and Angus Deaton "High income improves evaluation of life but not emotional well-being" PNAS 2010 107: 16489-16493. http://www.pnas.org/content/107/38/16489

Presumably this number is an average across many different geographical areas. So I am curious about how this number was influenced by purchasing power and other factors.

That is, $75K gets you and your family a lot more space in a exurb or rural area compared to an expensive city like NY or SF. Does this matter? Or does a family spending most of their $75K income renting a 500 sf apartment in NY experience the same level of happiness as an equivalent family in a remote suburb with much more living space.

(Obviously, you could ask a similar question about other factors that change dramatically with geography - e.g. public/private school quality, cost of food, cost of leisure activities, access to culture, public services, etc)

> Or does a family spending most of their $75K income renting a 500 sf apartment in NY experience the same level of happiness as an equivalent family in a remote suburb with much more living space.

There has been some research done around how some people who live in cities (especially those who can be paid a relatively high livable wage) are those who want the local optimum of their available choices (maximizers). [1,2]

This tends to make them possibly less happy than those who have less choices. For instance, if you live in London or NYC, there are hundreds of options for nightlife and entertainment - and you might want to be somewhere else even if you are at club X (fear of missing out).

But the reality is:

"Happiness is complicated. Wherever you live." [3]

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Paradox_of_Choice:_Why_More...

[2] http://blog.penelopetrunk.com/2012/02/14/the-real-value-of-d...

[3] http://www.theatlanticcities.com/arts-and-lifestyle/2011/10/...

Good points.

Urban dwellers - especially high-income ones who chose to live there (as opposed to people who were simply born into working class NYC or SF and stayed) - often have idealistic, maximizer notions of "taking advantage of everything the city has to offer". Which is impossible and absurd in even a medium sized city, let alone NYC, London, SF.

Hard to see how their conclusion really makes sense. They basically play some semantic game to totally separate the ideas of satisfaction and happiness.

Also, this is in regards to income, not wealth. They are distinct things. Curious if there is a study regarding that. For myself, I don't think any additional money would make me happy. However, I am very happy I can provide healthy lives for my family.

The opposite arrow of causation is bigger.

Wealthy individuals make a choice over the long term to either draw income from their business to spend on luxury, or leave it in the business to grow. Depressed people choose the former, optimistic & energetic people choose the latter. Thus high 'emotional well-being' causes lower incomes.

After reading that article, you still want a citation showing that someone could be homeless and happier than those kids? ReallY? Maybe re-read the article?

The citation is against money not being able to buy happiness. Indeed, most of the research shows it does a pretty good job of working at that task. Now, the same research does show diminishing returns.

And, there is the whole statistical abnormality of this story. For every person that fits in this story, I suspect there are countless that could use an extra 10 dollars.

Am I saying that I envy these poor children? Of course not. I just view this as a story that you can not really use in any informative way. Name one decision that you will change based on this information?

After reading, I'd strongly consider not leaving an inheritance for my children. It seems to have wreaked generations of havoc on this family.

Your might find it worth reading back-to-back biographies of the Vanderbilts and Rockefellers. The Vanderbilts' wealth created generations of horror. The Rockefellers did much better: generally functional families and several descendants making solid contributions to the world. It's clear enough from the books where the difference comes from. If you raise your kids right, inheritance is not a bad thing.

http://www.amazon.com/Fortunes-Children-Fall-House-Vanderbil...

http://www.amazon.com/Titan-Life-John-Rockefeller-Sr/dp/1470...

I think it boils down to simple statistics. Those kids and those happy hobos may be in the minority.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hedonic_treadmill

Dan Gilbert's "Stumbling on happiness", along with his works. Basically, since you don't have a comparison point between the stuff that you have, and they stuff that you don't have - it won't affect you.

In fact, there are a quick Ted talk about that, you can search for his name.

If you are truly homeless -- note, not currently living without a home, but truly homeless -- it is hard to really conceive of them not having a comparison point. Food, shelter, friends, transportation. All of these things are readily visible to them daily, yet denied them.

Also, don't get me wrong, this article does indicate some rather unfortunate situations. I personally do not envy them their lot. However, statistically non-existant situations are hard for me to really consider.

I don't know if this was the parent author's intent, but one could very plausibly be homeless by choice, being materially poor and living a life with intentionally few obligations, as opposed to being someone forced onto the streets because of mental illness or financial trouble.

On the other hand, this story is in Rolling Stone and ostensibly "newsworthy" because money almost always provides insulation against this kind of deprivation.

Go to any large city in the US and you'll find this same story played out countless times with children living in equally terrible, deprived and dangerous situations. It won't be news because their parents are poor.

The article is a lot more readable if you remove print=true from the query string. If you want to avoid the paginated mess, setting font-family to Georgia and width to 60% makes it pretty easy on the eyes as well.

"The only way to succeed is to make people hate you." --Josef von Sternberg

  The twins' father, Walker Inman, 57, lumbered from the 
  mansion, his tattooed sleeves visible under a black T-
  shirt, drinking his morning rum ... He'd been full of 
  dangerous mischief since he was a child. As a 13-year-old 
  orphan in 1965 taken in by his aunt Doris Duke, Walker – 
  then called "Skipper" – had romped around her lavish 
  14,000-square-foot Hawaiian estate without regard for 
  property or propriety

That single word "orphan" is the most important part of this article. The reason this piece is so bizarre is that the sorts of traits that allow you to build great fortunes in business[1] are anti-correlated with those that result in becoming a tattooed, drunk, abusive, morbidly obese, criminally-inclined drug addict. Put another way, the kind of guy who would build up a fortune like that would be unlikely to have a biological son like this. In America we're supposed to pretend that DNA doesn't matter, and that you can only pass down looks/height and not brains/behavior, but reality doesn't work like that [2,3,4]. Babies put up for adoption at birth in particular tend to disproportionately be children of parents with low impulse control and mental disorders, and at least some of that appears to be due to the genetics of the parents above and beyond the orphanage conditions [5]. Sounds harsh, but good to know if you're considering adopting.

[1] Celebrities and athletes are of course excluded from this sentence. They don't become wealthy through scaling businesses/managing people, and as such have a much higher incidence of behavioral issues. Many NBA and NFL athletes are bankrupt after a few years out of the league, in fact.

[2] http://www.yale.edu/scan/GT_2004_NRN.pdf

[3] http://www.amazon.com/The-Blank-Slate-Modern-Denial/dp/01420...

[4] http://www.zo.utexas.edu/courses/kalthoff/bio346/PDF/PowerPo...

[5] http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1737667,00.ht...

  The Minnesota psychologist and her colleagues found that 
  disparity could be due as often to innate factors such as 
  perinatal care or his birth parents' genes. "The 
  deleterious effects may quite possibly have come before the 
  adoption ever took place," Keyes, the study's lead 
  researcher, says.

Did you read any of the bits in between your ellipses?

  ...stinking rich from three trust funds: one from his
  father, Walker Inman Sr., heir to an Atlanta cotton
  fortune and stepson to American Tobacco Company founder
  "Buck" Duke; one from his mother, Georgia Fagan; the third
  from his grandmother, Buck's widow Nanaline Duke, who left
  the bulk of her $45 million estate to her little grandson.

The money involved was made by people with the same genes as Walter Inman, Jr.

And his father also died from "consumption" or "getting too fucked up too often" disease.

I've had some exposure to the "very wealthy" and they're just as fucked up at a rate as someone you might find in the trailer park tradition. It's often a factor of luck.

Consumption is a synonym for tuberculosis, nothing else.

You know what, looks like you're right on this one and I am wrong. It wasn't clear on a first read whether they were saying "his father" as in "his biological father" or "his adoptive father", but on a second read you're right. I still think the statements hold in their generality but clearly not in this specific case.

The excerpt you cite is from the first 5% of the article. Have you read the whole thing? There is more than enough evidence in this piece to show that nurture was very much a factor here, regardless of whether nature was or not.

>That single word "orphan" is the most important part of this article.

Are you sure you are not conflating the concepts "orphan" and "adopted"?

Both tattoos and obesity are inextricably tied in with social class; as a general rule, the very wealthy are far less likely to become obese or get tattoos, for a variety of reasons. That leaves "drunk" and "drug addict"; what's your basis for claiming that the children of wealthy businessmen are unlikely to have substance abuse problems?

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