[–] 2 points 2 months ago

for some reason he also had a Japanese flag crossed out

My dude, we can't ever know what motivates another human, but a Chinese person being anti-Japanese at a shrine that honors WW2 war criminals isn't exactly a puzzling event.

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  • [–] 15 points 4 months ago

    I was doing my genealogy and found out my great-grandparents lived in like the richest area of Pennsylvania. Checked census data and they were a maid and a chauffeur.

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  • [–] 4 points 4 months ago*

    Because securing generational wealth isn't as simple as "locking in," and neither is maintaining it.

    Firstly, there's a threshold of income that you have to reach before you even become capable of purchasing an appreciating asset without enough debt to make your financial situation too precarious. In the US the average threshold is around 90k per year (though this varies a lot by region). Below that threshold people have to invest nearly all their income into simply making ends meet, with anything left going to a rainy day fund that gets periodically wiped out by unexpected expenses (if they can even manage that, otherwise the unexpected expenses force them to fall back on others or take a hit that pushes them further down the income ladder). There is no self-directed opportunity for advancement at this level without taking on debt (and therefore a great deal of risk), or you need a lucky break.

    Finally, let's say you do get your lucky break and manage to buy a nice house, or some land, or start a successful business. Now the problem is making sure your wealth not only holds its value, but grows in value at a rate that exceeds inflation, keeps pace with a changing economy, and multiplies by however many inheritors you intend to pass it down to. This introduces another threshold below which the wealth will dwindle and disappear after only a few generations (the value of a lone house can collapse in just one). I don't know exactly what this threshold is right now in the US, but I know that above it it's virtually impossible to lose wealth because it grows rapidly on its own without intervention (this is because owning private property enables you to extract the value of others' labor, creating the previously mentioned problems. yay capitalism!).

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  • [–] 4 points 4 months ago

    there was literally this thing selling to boomers the idea that they should die poor. Was big sometime in the eighties into the 90's I think. that they were wasting it if they did not spend it. Of course rich families did not do this.

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  • [–] 10 points 4 months ago

    If you ever get wealthy and your interest is in keeping the next generation wealthy, you set up a trust with stricts rules on keeping up with inflation, balancing accounts to even out the distribution and an absolute iron gate against drawing out the principal.

    The long-long-long term generation wealth families don’t just hand the next generation an enormous pile of cash. They hand them the right to continually receive cash from a trust.

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  • [–] 14 points 4 months ago

    Great Great grandfather had the opportunity to buy half of Boulder Colorado. Decided instead to invest in that stock market thing, it's never lost. Invested everything in early October of 1929.

    Fucked my whole family up. My grandfather abandoned my grandmother and all his children because he needed to be rich to get his father's respect.

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  • [–] 5 points 4 months ago* (4 children)

    Per his journal my great great grandad was poker buddies with the Oreida potato trio, and according to said journal he opted not to try their newfangled method of potatoing so we're all a little angry with him. i could have been a spud princess

    family legend, so who knows how much truth and how much horsepucky, but there's a bit of each in there

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  • [–] 5 points 4 months ago

    I'm not saying it's impossible, just that it typically requires unusual behavior like that or very unusual circumstances such as very large and valuable (typically land) holdings that cannot be sold. Either the wealth gets divided too much or there's infighting or someone is given the keys to the kingdom and ruins it.

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  • [–] 7 points 4 months ago (1 child)

    Wasn't there a family that would only have one heir to the money, incentivizing having only one or 2 children and both raised\groomed to not fuck up the money. Like if backup kid needed money, they'd get a loan from the trust but have to pay it back with interest. They have a family estate so if anyone fucks up they don't end up homeless. With so many advisers making sure the money is OK above all else.

    I swear the Medici family still has an heir living off of that generational wealth

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