The problem with being born rich and being handed everything is you never have to work hard for anything

“Warren Buffett said to me once he had the advantage of having two parents who gave him unconditional love, and that is what he thought was the most important thing that made him successful,” David Rubenstein said.

I can understand his view (no I can’t). He came from working class folks(Which if his father was a postal worker and mother didn’t have to work, made them middle class.

) He worked his way to being a billionaire-good for him. He suspects, his background gave him a sense of achievement. He looks at his kids, and realize they won’t have the character building obstacles that he did.
I kinda see that in my niece. While my dad was white collar- medical bills made us more middle class(and we lived in a small town, so we didn’t flaunt our wealth.) my brother went to college and got his dream job. I was still in high school and my dad lost his job due to hostile tack over of the 80s, and we were poor-and remained poor for my college years. My brother lives in Palo Alto, my niece is growing up in an environment totally foreign to me and my mother.

He’s got a good point. There’s a reason why they’re called “the idle rich.” Nowadays they call them afflicted with affluenza. Look at Conrad Hilton, pretty much a waste of skin.
The problem in most businesses is the first generation is the one that builds up the wealth. The second generation often works with the first generation and has a stake in the wealth. By the time the third generation comes along they have no memory of the struggles of the first and grew up never having wanted for anything—and this lack of want is what is so destructive.

This is why the third generation tends to be the most useless. Look at the Walton clan.

“You know, it occurs to me that the best way you hurt rich people is by turning them into poor people.”

It says his father made $7,000 which according to some bullshiat inflation calculator is around $70k today, his mother didn’t work, he went to a private, name university and went to a name law school.

I’m sorry that’s just not underprivileged, except compared to the stupid money he has now from all the ridiculous connections he got from networking with other rich kids in his prestigious schools and the people he met working at a prestigious law firm and advising the president.

n the flip side, many many scientific advances were made by ‘idle rich’ gentlemen during the Enlightenment.
We just need better rich people. That was an entirely different environment. You had to be rich just to get any education at all, so you were far more likely to have the skills necessary to discover or develop those advancements. We’re still making tons of scientific advancements but it’s been spread out across a far larger pool of people, which makes most of them seem smaller and more incremental. But we’re still marching forward. Also, rich people these days study business, so it’s not likely any of the idle rich are going to stumble upon some great scientific discovery.