Rich people love to distinguish between old and new rich. Am I supposed to somehow be impressed by this? Old rich just use their money for pleasure and status like new rich do, they just have different more obtuse ways to do it.
I think there are implications or reasons i see this… (this is not an endorsement)
1. “New rich” is flashy and gaudy and that’s not perceived as a positive. Flaunting wealth is seen as trying to show off for the admiration/approval/jealousy of the less rich. Being old rich is to be above it, and so comfortable with money you don’t need to show it off.
2. “Old Rich” is a separate world, it’s like royalty, no amount of success today makes you old rich yesterday. Since having the right connections is an important factor in success, it’s another way to close doors for everyone but your kids.
3. I think there’s a certain “aesthetic” that old-money is associated with (enjoyed by the not rich). A quasi-royal preppy guilded sort of image, and people seem to like that.
1. old money is afraid to spend frivolously because (a) they are embarrassed because they know they didn't earn it themselves and (b) they don't believe they could make it on their own if they had to. Also, old money shamelessly flaunts their wealth. Hospital naming rights, charity events, art collections, etc.
2. because old money is the opposite of meritocratic (inheritance based) they have to come up with all kinds of gatekeeping strategies to maximize the advantage of their social position.
3. social rules that keep the old monied themselves in check, to slow down the inevitable reversion to the mean.
>Also, old money shamelessly flaunts their wealth. Hospital naming rights, charity events, art collections, etc.
I think charity type stuff is seen a bit different than flashy ridiculously expensive cars and such.
It's a way that might be seen as showing off but is not perceived as badly and so less likely to get you noticed in a less desirable way.
Similarly those art collections unless lent/donated don't leave the estate and are hardly flashy
Of course it's perceived differently, that's the entire point! A $2000 Brunello Cucinelli sweater is conspicuous consumption just like an oversized Gucci belt.
And the art world is small. People know who the collectors are.
The difference is that every joe blow knows what Gucci looks like but only certain people, if any, can spot a sweater like that. You are signalling to completely different groups. Honestly I'd be surprised if anyone outside diehard fashion "experts" could spot a subdued Brunello sweater at all so the intent there is not to signal at all.
New rich can sometimes be a middle finger to the old rich.
I'm thinking of some Hiphop stars.
Over the top behaviour, perhaps, but I'll always respect that more than the old rich dripping in the unearned benefits of their generational wealth, connections and status worship. But I'm not bitter.
But new rich means people are closer to the source of wealth. Someone who built a successful business is more admirable than someone who never worked, but their ancestors were very wealthy.
Oh come on, it’s easy. Firstly, everyone kinda wishes they won the lottery, intense wealth sounds fun.
I don’t bootlick billionaires and I generally consider wealth inequality a major societal failure, but I can recognize that someone who built immense wealth usually worked hard (and got very lucky!), and potentially possessed some entrepreneurial skill I lack. I also admire musicians because I have no musical ability, and I admire athletes because I have no athletic ability.
What is “character” good for if not helping society in some way? For the most useful ways you could help society, you end up getting paid. So while making money != character, there’s a correlation.
While I believe that I mostly understand the distinction between Old Rich and New Rich (myself being neither of them), I wonder where individuals such as Warren Buffett fall in the social distinction. While it's obvious that in practice he's "new rich" in terms of family timeline, he is famously quite the opposite of the showy New Rich stereotypes. Furthermore, I'm sure there are countless more like him (though not quite so rich) that are virtually unknown precisely because they are so restrained and discreet about their wealth.
I guess what I'm getting at is that I'm curious as to how the Old Rich feel towards these non-New-Rich-but-newly-rich types. Are they still considered part of the New Rich riff-raff even if they do happen to be more sensible with their money? Or are they seen as honorary Old Rich out of respect? Or something else?
Hopefully some Old Rich HN commenter (we know you're there!) can give me some insight.
You've got two bell curves that mostly overlap and a bunch of upper middle class know-it-alls who are trying to say profound things about the nature of the irrelevent little valley between the two summits.
None of this crap really matters. There's plenty of old money types who spend on flamboyant crap and plenty of new money types who don't and trying to generalize based on how many generations they've had money is beyond a fool's errand.
Buffet's diet consists of coca-cola and hamburgers, and every year he throws a massive self-promotion and sales event in Omaha that lasts multiple days. By old money standards it's vulgar.
It’s legitimate. He doesn’t even own McDonalds but every day would get bacon, egg, and cheese biscuit for $3.17. It’s a comfortable, new money thing. You grow up on these things and a lot of the times it ends up being a familiar routine. Gates is the same way with burgers. God knows I’d still doing the same thing past a billionaire.
‘Rich’ is a relative term but my family might qualify as ‘old rich’ and do tend to distinguish from ‘new rich’. The terms are misnomers. People who might be labelled ‘new rich’ or ‘nouveau riche’ do not have the qualities of tastes, behaviours, or values that are handed down and refined over many generations. It is a relatively easy-to-observe distinction.
I am not saying it’s an important distinction to me.
This makes sense, and sounds reasonable. I think people are getting hung up on 'qualities of tastes', believing (I assume) it is a value judgement. I read it as 'characteristics'.
As a result of proximity over time, the 'old rich' have developed unique cultural habits that are easily recognized as different to 'new rich'. Every group does this. Sure, there is good and bad to it, but it's a natural and expected outcome.
It's a term made up to embarrass newcomers. Cultural differences are not right or wrong, they just are.
To say someone has the wrong 'qualities of tastes, behaviors or values' is arrogance. Everybody's culture is handed down, that's another weasel-phrase that just disguises bigotry.
It’s a poor term but one that simply refers to observable differences. It is unfortunate that there may be bigory or judgements accorded. I am inclined to suppose that those people are in the minority.
> People who might be labelled ‘new rich’ or ‘nouveau riche’ do not have the qualities of tastes, behaviours, or values that are handed down and refined over many generations
>"I think there’s a certain “aesthetic” that old-money is associated with (enjoyed by the not rich). A quasi-royal preppy guilded sort of image, and people seem to like that."
Middle class people putting old money on a pedestal and denigrating new money is so laughable to me.
The folks that do nothing but own land and raise your rent every year are oh so classy, and the folks that actually work invent things that improve your life like idk wifi are oh so gauche.
I once read somewhere that the issue is that to the old rich money isn't a topic. It's something that exists and has existed for a long time, that gets used when needed, but doesn't get talked about.
New rich on the other hand feel the need to display the fact that "they've made it", talking about money is important to them.
So there's a certain incompatibility between old and new rich, where old rich feel bothered by the talk about money.
I think in general money isn't a topic amongst the rich. Yes, there are exceptions, but in general it's a very boring thing to talk about once you reach a certain level.
I personally think of it as a pure human need to somehow feel superior to their peers. Sure, they have the same amount of money, but are how did they get them and can we make their status lower ( and at the same time ours higher ) by pointing to that. The in-group/out-group dynamic is at play for everyone including apparently people, who have a lot of money. If I was a more charitable person, I would say that is a good thing. It means they are still connected to the human race.
Note. By rich here I am talking upwards of 100MM although it would appear B would soon be replacing M as the place to be money-wise in terms of wealth recognition.
I think the implication is that “old money” has aristocratic roots and thus, “noble blood”. Just plain old chauvinism and bigotry, but now applied to billionaires too.
Quite the opposite. A Carnegie whose money comes from developing the American steel industry, or a Hershey whose money comes from chocolate, or the heirs of countless founders of companies that make real stuff, seems much more ethical than people today who make their money from one of the various heads of the advertising or finance hydras.
Stuff like that had negative localized effects, but the ad industry that fuels large segments of tech has negative effects across a much broader swath of the population and economy.
You're trolling here, right? It is not actually your position that it is more ethical to be a steel baron who orders the shooting death of striking workers than it is to be an adtech CEO, right?
Carnegie never ordered deaths of striking workers nor do I think you can make a defensible case that in general steel magnates do. Mining business is difficult and laborers in that industry sure do go through a lot; ore smelting laborers report having respiratory illnesses indeed quite regularly so I agree that steel barons are not completely inculpable if analyzed through an ethics lens.
But looking over the fact that the advertising industry is fundamentally about the exploitation of cognitive biases in order to convince folks to buy things that more often than that they do not need just betrays a certain naïveté of what's going on out there.
Violent suppression of labor organizing is a prominent part of American history. Read, for instance, Rick Perlstein's "Before The Storm" about what happened at the Kohler factory in Sheboygan, more recently than the steel strike we're talking about here.
> You should google the Pittsburgh steel strikes and Henry Frick.
You mean the guy who survived an assassination attempt by labor activists, who were running a totally illegal blockade of his business? And it’s not even like the laws have changed about it since then, their blockade strike would be totally illegal today as well.
> And it’s not even like the laws have changed about it since then
Let me know if it's still legal to have your workers work with highly dangerous machinery for 12 hours a day, 7 days a week (for wages that would be comparable to federal minimum wage today ~ although it's hard to find a good inflation calculator that tracks back to the 1880s).
I'm sure that's totally comparable to the plight that Google/FB/Amzn employees have to put up with.
Obviously I admire what he did with the Gospel of Wealth & his philanthropy, but that doesn't excuse his horrible treatment of workers.
Honestly, it's just so astonishing that you can even argue in support of Henry Frick.
You should read up about the Johnstown FLood and the failure of the South Fork Dam.
I feel like the HN crowd just skims the wikipedia bio and uses that to craft a hilariously terrible argument.
If they didn’t like the working condition, they could have striked or left, that’s not the point. What they did in fact do was to use violence to block people who did like these working condition and specifically came there to work there in their place, when they striked. Oh, and they tried to kill Frick too, don’t forget that.
I am not so much arguing in support of Frick but rather against a completely dishonest narrative where he is villainized for “shooting workers”, while completely omitting the details as to what events led to that situation.
I suspect that this is why end up repeating history in one form or another over and over again. Stuff happens, we learn some lessons, we forget about the stuff (or our institutional memory does) and then we forget the lessons setting the stage for stuff to happen again. Frustrating business, more so to see it happening on such a short timescale. If it was something that the Romans did I could get why it isn't remembered as acutely but this is recent history and even far outside the country where it happened this - used to be - is common knowledge.
