WEALTH, GUARANTEED

The simplest — and oldest — get-rich-quick scheme rears its head among the world’s youngest billionaires

GOING BY THE tech bros, overly-optimistic podcasters and even the odd selfhelp book, there are many ways to become independently wealthy, a “job creator” even, and in some cases, just stinking rich. They will tell you to “innovate” and “disrupt the market”, to “hustle” and “grind”, to be a tech genius and street smart, all at once. But, as it turns out, there’s an easier way to acquire wealth. It is simple, old-fashioned and has been around as long as there have been haves and havenots. And it’s something of an open secret, but one that no wealth guru will talk about.

Here it is, then, a sure-fire way to make money: Inherit it. Forbes magazine has revealed that all billionaires under 30 — there are 15 of them in the world today — have done the hard work of having the right last names. The list includes Firoz (27) and Zahan Mistry (25), who inherited Cyrus Mistry’s share in the Tata group, reportedly worth $4.6 billion. The youngest billionaire, Livia Voigt, owes her $1.1 billion fortune to WEG Industries, the Brazilian electrical equipment giant founded by her grandfather. The number of young billionaires is set to grow. A generation of wealthy moguls, aged 70 and above, are set to pass on over $5 trillion to their descendants over the next 20-30 years.

There’s nothing wrong with generational wealth, a corpus so large that it can preclude the need to work. And more than likely, anger at the uber-rich stems at least in part from jealousy. After all, envy is the most natural of emotions for the vast majority that works massively hard to make ends meet and afford the smallest luxury. The once and future oligarchs, of course, are plain lucky — and good luck, like misfortune, is an accident of fate. Just one request to the finance gurus and tech bros imparting wisdom, as they write their wills — spare the working man and woman the lectures about how to get rich.