He had a lifelong desire to earn a living,
which helped keep him grounded.
which helped keep him grounded.
— Julian Baggini
"Let me tell you about the very rich," F. Scott Fitzgerald famously wrote.
"They are different from you and me.
"They possess and enjoy early, and it does something to them, makes them soft where we are hard, and cynical where we are trustful, in a way that, unless you were born rich, it is very difficult to understand.
"They think, deep in their hearts, that they are better than we are."
Outside of trust fund babies, who doesn't loathe trust fund babies?
While the rest of us worry what the boss really thinks, how much longer the car will last, and whether to pay the whole credit card bill this month, they worry about the currents next week off Barbados, whether to hang the Basquiat alongside the Beeple, and what to wear to Saturday's steeplechase.
They're not immune, of course, to overdoses, cirrhosis, cancers, or car accidents.
That, at least, is satisfying.
Numerically, trust fund babies are small in number.
Almost 75% of the super-rich 1% have earned their wealth; and only 16% have inherited "old money" (earned two, three or four generations ago).
Nonetheless, that 16% represents 527,000 people to loathe.
These loathsome people have inherited, on average, $2.7 million, according to the Federal Reserve.
That's $447 for every $1 inherited by the poor.
And not all trust fund babies are, of course, airheaded wastrels.
Buddha. St. Francis. Lafayette. Cézanne. Tolstoy. Bertrand Russell. Edith Wharton. FDR. JFK. William S. Burroughs. Gloria Vanderbilt. Anderson Cooper.
The list is long.
Unfairly advantaged in almost every stage and walk of life, they're spoiled and lazy; vain and vapid; aloof and self-righteous; petty and paranoid.
Envy is insecurity masquerading as resentment: it invites you to compare yourself to others who, by dint of good luck, enjoy status you lack—and to cultivate hatred for them.
But we tend to stereotype trust fund babies.
Bolstered by wealth, they are directionless, and know nothing of failure and hardship.
But the trust fund baby would tell us we're guilty of envy, and that envy's a sin.
"Envy rots the bones," Proverbs says.
"Envy is a mind game with our sinful nature," says Christian writer Quinn Jackson.
"At its core, envy comes from the lack of belief that God is all powerful, cares about you deeply and has wonderful plans for your life."
Envy is in fact so sinful, Jackson says, it's practically inadmissible.
To admit to being envious is to admit you're "ungenerous, mean, and small-hearted."
Hogwash.
At its core, envy seeks justice.
Envy isn't hate; it's contempt, targeted, in this case, at unearned moneyed privilege—and the power it wields over us, even if only potentially.
As a member of the trust fundless, that contempt is my right.
You'll have to pry it from my cold, dead hands.
