He was born on third base, but he thinks he hit a triple.

I read this in a book I saw while browsing at my local bookstore this weekend. One guess on who it is about. Yep... It's about Chimpy McBunnypants.

I wonder, and put to you, if all people born in to privilege are this inane and useless (i.e. Bush, Paris Hilton) or are some of them sheltered so much by their life of luxury that they never have the chance to be a real person.

Or maybe it is something else all together.

Your thoughts?

and felt that public service (not making more money) was a duty.

They paid a high price for that.

There are still quite a few worthless Kennedys. Especially the current generation.

As far as I know, the Kennedy's are very much a family dedicated to public service (at least here in Massachusetts)

Florida a few years back.

Luke 12:48

"...From everyone to whom much has been given, much will be required; and from the one to whom much has been entrusted, even more will be demanded"

"With great power comes great responsibility".

:P

at least started out with that tradition and notion of obligation and service; I agree that it does not seem to be as strong in some of the current generation in particular.
I think people born to privelige can very easily become inane and useless without some pretty stringent efforts on the part of parents and others to not only try to instill, but MODEL the kind of life one hopes one's children would live. And if the parents are inane and useless themselves, so much the more difficult for the child to think they need do otherwise.
Kerry was born to wealth too, but has not been the useless waste of space and oxygen that Chimpy has, that's for sure.

I think a lot depends on parenting. My husband's parents are very well-off (not Bush or Hilton well-off, but...)and my husband is extremely compassionate and down-to-earth.

Paris Hilton really is a walking advertisement for inheritance taxes.

sorry, had to do it.

...to remedy that very problem. The estate tax allows the children of the super-rich to remain wealthy, but not super-rich. Unfortunately, both of these are being undermined even as we now speak.

Consider, if you will, the hard work, effort, and strength of character it required for Sam Walton to build up his Wal-Mart chain from a small Arkansas storefront. Over the course of a couple of decades, he saw his start-up business grow to rival K-mart, the leading low-cost retailer, and eventually surpass it. In order to do so, he held to certain principles, among them the "Made in the USA" campaign which you may remember from the late '80s and early '90s.

When he died, so died the integrity of the 'little store that could,' and it quickly morphed into the soul-devouring behemoth we all know and love today. Think his kids were particularly interested in sticking to his time- and care-worn principles? Or maybe rather that they had acquired a taste for money that he had been unfamiliar with and would quite probably have been sickened by?

That's the thing about the sons and daughters of privilege: they don't carry the entreprenurial spirit and deeper understanding of human nature with them into the second or third generation. I Got Mine Syndrome strikes hard among those who, through no fault of their own, are tragically and chronically wealthy. It is hard for them, having never worked for anything that they own and thus having no standard by which to judge its value, to understand that they are, in Newton's words, "standing on the shoulders of giants." So you can see why they might feel that way, but perhaps only they can understand why any of us should have compassion and understanding for their predicament (other than sheer human pity).