The cursed lives of the super-rich
Wealth, they say, typically lasts three generations. One creates it, the next grows it. The third squanders it. Can we break this spell?
Wealth is built over generations. And it takes much effort to keep it together. But the kids wouldn’t get it and the point had to be hammered home. That is why, in a fit of exasperation, after much pleading that everyone cut down on screentime and get to work, I yanked their access to wi-fi. And to grind sobriety into their heads, I insisted they take a walk so we revisit the current lives and homes of people whom I had imagined as privileged when growing up.
Their now-all-too familiar chorus that is “that’s-not-fair” didn’t cut ice. “Life isn’t fair,” I said. What they could not hear was the voice of a business journalist who has witnessed and chronicled over the years how wealth is created and destroyed. If their chorus was met with any mercy now, destiny would eventually be merciless on them.
There’s an American expression that places this in perspective: Shirtsleeves to shirtsleeves in three generations. The Chinese put it more bluntly: Wealth does not last beyond three generations. What they mean is the same: It takes the first generation to create wealth, the second to grow it, and the third to either fracture it, or fritter it all away.
The Third-Generation Curse, found the world over, India included, is the subject of much research. Famous examples include battles between the scions of the Mafatlal family, the Singhanias and the Rahejas to name a few. But all this research and debate has stayed focused on the lives of the superrich. My interest lies in the stories of People Like Us (PLUs) and an attempt to answer a question: Does the maxim that is shirtsleeves-to-shirtsleeves cut across all economic strata?
If anecdotal evidence is anything to go by, it does. My sample size included five people including friends and cousins from the growing up years. I imagined all of them as superrich a few decades ago. They now come across as wasted adults. Whatever happened?
On listening to each of their stories, a pattern started to emerge. As they got into adulthood, turns out, it wouldn’t be too long before they started to run out of money, marriages fell apart, and they had to cut down on the lifestyles. They now live in the past. When asked about what may have gone wrong, everyone had the same thing to say: They were misled into believing their privileges would last forever. And they grew up ill-equipped on how to deal with stress. But nothing lasts forever. And not all stress is bad.
That there is an upside to stress is a theme Alia Crum, principal investigator of the Stanford Mind and Body Lab, talks about in an article she wrote for Harvard Business Review in September 2015. “Stress shows us that we care; that the stakes matter. Owning this realisation unleashes positive motivation—because deep down we know that things that are important shouldn’t always come easy… Do you really expect that raising a child, running a business, living a life of impact would be easy?” she asks.
But the five people I spoke to didn’t know about this in their early years. Their grandparents who started work to create the wealth did; their parents who were witnesses to the earlier generation’s struggle imbibed the ethic and grew it. But somewhere down the line, they missed a trick or two on how to pass the ethic to the third generation.
Is it possible to escape the Third-Generation Curse? A friend from school who is one of Asia’s largest suppliers to the pharmaceutical industry believes it is. That is why he has refused to pass the baton that he picked up from his father to his children until they prove themselves. While they’ve been inducted into the business, they have been compelled to start at the bottom.
The kids and their friends appear sobered down. At least, for now!