Super-rich Stop Spoiling their Kids

Millionaires cut back inheritances to combat ‘affluenza’

Pity America’s rich kids. Their millionaire parents are giving away their inheritances and limiting their legacies to ‘middle-class levels’. A study by Harvard University fundraiser and author, Charles W Collier, has found that as many as 600,000 of the 3,2 million millionaires in the US will give away the bulk of their personal fortunes for fear of spoiling their children. It is part of a growing trend in the US: the fight against ‘affluenza’, the problems associates with having too much money.

Of course, affluenza is not restricted to the US – rich people are everywhere. But it is only in the US, particularly in Los Angeles, that they have managed to elevate the matter to one of enormous public concern, with a mass of TV documentaries, magazines and even bank seminars examining this trendiest of dysfunctional behaviours. Endemic as affluenza may well be, it is nothing compared with the behaviour of the super-wealthy as they take precautions against the condition affecting their offspring. This is especially so in Hollywood.

Take film stars Michael Douglas and Catherine Zeta-Jones, for example. Among their son Dylan’s christening gifts was a charity foundation, worth an estimated $1.65m, established to teach the boy how to give away money. “We will see how he deals with this duty before giving him any more,” the London Sunday Times quoted Douglas as saying. Said actress Jamie Lee Curtis, who together with film director husband Christopher Guest has adopted two children, Annie and Thomas: “I want them to have enough money to pay a restaurant bill, not buy the restaurant and fire the waiter.”

Susan Sarandon, who has two sons, Jack and Miles, with fellow actor Tim Robbins, put it this way: “Money addles the brain. I see enough damaged Hollywood brats around us to see what happens when parents are content to show their love posthumously.” The rich don’t want their children to end up like Raphael de Rothschild, heir to one of the world’s largest fortunes. He was found dead, at 23, on a New York pavement two years ago after overdosing on heroine. De Rothschild was ‘old money’ but many among the self-made millionaires believe there is a valuable lesson to be learnt from his demise.

Sociologists have been quick to point out that the new rich were entrepreneurs who derived satisfaction from earning money, not spending it. One, Jeremy Brighton, from South California University, points out that many of them were brought up in the 1960s with ‘liberal quilt’ about money. “That is why Bill Gates, one of the richest men in the world, said he would not leave his family more than $100-million,” Brighton said. “He and his wife, Melinda, do not want their two children to live a paranoid, pointless life. This is true of an increasing number of newly wealthy people New York and Washington.”

One particular fact that has alarmed the nouveau riche has found its way onto affluenza-related websites, and that is: the world’s dollar billionaires together possess almost as much wealth as the poorest 50% of the planet’s population; that is, just 358 people have as much money as 2.5 billion others.

 

1) Try to explain what is ‘affluenza’?

2) Do you agree with the US millionaires who think that money can spoil their children? Explain your point of view.

3) What does money mean for you and what attitude towards money are you going to teach your future children?

4) What other things, besides money, are able to spoil children?

 

Task 21. According to the information in the text, write the name of the person or people who:

1) is critical of other Hollywood parents and their spoiled children?

2) want to ensure their two children have a clear purpose in life?

3) conducted research into what US millionaires plan to do with their money after they die?

4) died at a very young age from drug abuse despite being the heir to a huge fortune?

5) set up a special charitable organization for their son to contribute to?

6) wants her children to have money to enjoy themselves, but not enough to abuse it?

7) is critical of Hollywood parents who think it’s enough to leave their children money in their will?

8) suggests a link between the fight against affluenza and the era people grew up in?