Don’t envy the super-rich: it’s hard to keep hold of a fortune…
News that the Duke of Westminster will pay almost no death duties on his late father’s £9 billion estate brings to mind that tired old line by F Scott Fitzgerald
– the rich are different from you and me. How tempting it would be to fume that only the little people pay taxes. And yet, didn’t Ernest Hemingway actually call it right, with his pithy riposte: “Yes, they have more money.”
In other words, there’s nothing so different about the very rich. They have the same cares of this world: death, family drama, even taxes (the Grosvenor estate pays a six per cent duty on its assets every 10 years). Much better to marvel that anyone can hold onto their money for so long. To lose a fortune is the easiest thing in the world. Countless are the families who have made it in one generation, only to blow it in the next (or the one after).
Consider the Vanderbilts, who in 1877 were worth $100 million. Today, six generations on, the trust funds are bone dry. Or the 7th Marquess of Bristol who, before he died aged 44 in 1999, managed to fritter £30 million away on partying. One needed only to be at the High Court on Thursday to remember how transient fortunes are.
It was here that Petra Ecclestone and James Stunt concluded their divorce in a five-minute hearing. Sadly, the juicy details of who gets what will remain secret, but we know there’s a £5 billion pot, and that divorce lawyers don’t come cheap. We also know that neither Stunt nor Ecclestone are backwards about coming forwards when it comes to buying cars, houses, wine, art, jewellery – almost anything.
How the faces of Bond Street traders light up every time Mr Stunt’s limos – three-car convoys of Lamborghini Aventador, Rolls-royce and Range Rover are not unknown – hove into view! How the cash registers ring at Harrods every time Ms Ecclestone stilts in!
For anyone who runs a business, or provides a service, or belongs to the 83 per cent of people in the private sector, the super-rich are a welcome adornment to our society. They pass on their cash with gay abandon, the money cascading down the economy, not the generations.
Only the public sector, which accounts for 16.9 per cent of people in employment, has a right to feel cheated about the rich not making their contribution. And yet of course they do – every time they pay VAT, or stamp duty, or import duty: which if you’re buying cars and watches and houses at Ecclestone rates, is often.
So you should delight in the spending of the super-rich, and encourage them to splurge even more – especially if you’re a trader in bespoke limousines, or private jets, or divorce papers. Chances are, that giant fortune will be yours one day. Then your only problem will be hanging on to it. For though the Left may froth about the Duke of Westminster’s death duties, hanging on to it is harder than it looks. Just ask the Vanderbilts.