Cycle of Riches

Kids these days don’t appreciate the value of money. You may be saying that’s been true throughout history, but there are reasons this generation is worse. Unlike most of us, they never see cash change hands and have genuinely no clue of the cost of anything – after all, if everything is paid for via credit cards, the phone, or (even more invisibly) online, how can they possibly have the faintest clue as to what anything costs?

 

William Guppy’s post on the topic very amusing. And eerily close to where our kids are probably headed. This guy is like the future of our kids – the generation that grew up well off, but didn’t take any steps to stay that way. With Wodehouse-style humour, he starts off by saying:

“Two days ago I had the misfortune of finding out that an old friend of mine, who I hadn't seen in some years, has done very well for himself. The fact was related to me over dinner, and in such a way that I was expected to congratulate him.”

And adds:

“His is an old Catholic family, and Catholics tend to run into money one way or another, even when they are perfectly idle or stupid. This person is neither, and so I cannot even fault him that.”

 

On deeper reflection though, he says:

“The difference between his family and mine is that his has learned to be rich over a long course of time, while mine is still reeling drunk from the first hit.”

And adds:

“The wealth and comfort of our parents has afforded us idleness in our twenties and assured us financial ruin for ever after. We lack both the discipline of the real middle class and the skill of the working class, having neither the education, connections nor skill necessary to sustain us beyond our twenties. We spend our youth in a temporary and cheapened aristocracy, working little, pouring our time into half-baked philosophising such as this, before tumbling into our thirties poorer and more wretched than the sons of bricklayers.”

He then reflects on the debauched life people like him have led:

“We have been bred, quite simply, for pleasure. We are soft and useless… (We were) suspended in a reality which asks nothing of us.”

 

Worse, the “damage” won’t end with his generation:

“Our children will have childish, whimsical parents. When we release them into the world they will be as useless as we are.”

But then, the cycle will repeat itself:

“They will have industrious and intelligent children, who will in turn give them idle and feckless grandchildren.”

 

Sad reality, but at least it made for a very humorous read.