"Devine, James" wrote:
>
>
> I think that rich people are taught how to behave: for example, they go to
> Phillips Exeter or some other prep school to learn "never to dip into
> capital" and to live off income instead.
>
When wealth crosses some line, it becomes impossible to consume the
whole of one's income (let alone one's capital) in any ordinary way --
gambling alone will do it. (In various "feudal-like" social orders one
could also lose it in warfare.) It becomes a little difficult to grasp
imaginatively what it might feel like to have an overwhelming drive to
turn (say) 17 billion into 26 billion.
My mother's favorite book was an early 20th century bit of froth (really
rather entertaining -- though I was only 12 or so when I read it) called
_Brewster's Millions_. He inherits $1 million. Then a banker arrives to
tell him he will inherit $7million or so from another distant relative,
who hated the man who passed on the first million. So the conditions for
inheriting the $7 million are that in one year, without throwing it away
he spend the whole million. The rest of the novel tells of his desperate
and barely succsssful efforts to get rid of that million. (Another
condition: he musn't tell anyone of his purposes, so it's embarassing to
be such a spendthrift.) There really are rough and ready limits to how
much anyone can "consume" in a given period.
Carrol
