A personal glimpse at American capitalism

[Parisle]

--- I'm not a rich person, but I get to hang around with a lot of them. No, not the super-rich,... just the small-to-intermediate traditional Horatio Alger American success stories,... Oh, let's say businesses launched by smart and enterprising individuals,.. and which succeeded largely on a lot of blood, sweat and tears of that first generation,.. and produced family businesses of up to around $100 million or so. (I've worked for much larger businesses, primarily in financial, computer and consumer manufacturing,.. but what I'm about to say is derived mostly from my more personal encounters at the more modest level. I leave it to the astute reader to extrapolate from there.)

--- Without putting too fine a point on things, I left a ten-year career in journalism in the 70's in order to "advance" (heh heh,.. joke's on me) into marketing and various forms of "consulting." Mainly I became a problem-solver, if you will. Then there was a weird segueway into the engineering field (don't ask), but the problem-solving,..... trouble-shooting nature of my work remained about the same. People called me in to fix things that were wrong,... things they couldn't figure out for themselves. I really enjoyed that,... I love a good challenge,.. but that is all that I intend to say about it. The point is,... I got to meet a lot of people. Let me tell you where the money is going,... what's wrong with American capitalism.

--- The following is a composite portrait of observations made over the past twenty years or so.

--- A smart and hard-working guy starts a business,... succeeds bigtime,... makes a small fortune for his family. And since he's now rich, he has a fairly big family,... 2-3 kids, anyway. Got a new mansion, a get-away place on the coast, a nice boat, some investment property in Florida or upstate New York. A few condo's. Trust funds for all the kids. And the company is running full out on all cylinders. The American Dream, eh?

--- But sadly (and almost predictably) the poor guy works himself into an early grave. The family attempts to carry on. That's when the perverse fun starts, and it can take a variety of courses. The wife generally knows the most, but still too little about the business,... the kids have all flunked out of the "best" schools,.. but they still engage in some animated fraternal combat over who gets to run things. The "winner," whomever it may be, is usually an idiot and an insufferable prick or bitch,.. based on a short lifetime of privilege and never lifting a finger towards their own support. The business registers this influence right away, have no fear. Meanwhile, the other siblings compete for the most creative ways to waste money without working,... and these usually boil down to drugs. Cocaine in particular is the most frequent pharmaceutical player in this drama. Five thousand bucks per month, per kid... is not unusual. The family siphons off more and more of the cash receipts from the business than they ever did when the "old man" was still around. But at this stage, the business adjusts and maintains. Maybe they hire a good manager. Employees become resentful.

--- Actually, at this stage, the problem is minimal, believe it or not. It's at this point that the kids start adding failed marriages and unintended children to their drug bills. The so-called "extended" family really gets extended in the third generation, eh? Instead of two or three spoiled kids fighting over dad's money, while producing nothing, themselves,... now you have ten or twelve legally enfranchised competitors all bidding for their share of what was once just one man's effort. Plus the cousins, the hangers-on, the new in-laws. Not one goddamned soul wants to work, mind you. But they all love their chemicals. This is "entitlement." The lines get drawn. Lawyers are ushered in. The banks weigh in, too. The original second generation is really pissed. I've spoken with 50-year-old guys with college degrees,... fretting about problems like this,... and when I mildly proposed that they could seek jobs in their ordained fields, or actually go to work for the family business, they looked at me as if I was crazy. "What? Me work?"

--- And here is where the business begins its almost unavoidable decline. I have seen businesses which grew from a single retail outlet to thirty-plus retail outlets in five states,... but which had shrunk to four outlets by the time I got asked for some "advice." Of course by that time, there were maybe fifty slothful, coke-snorting zombies planning to live the rest of their lives off the efforts of that one original entrepreneur. Frankly, I'm glad he didn't live to see it.

--- Now for that extrapolation I mentioned in the first paragraph. If this shit happens in the "modest" $100 million "family" businesses, don't you imagine that something of the same nature occurs all the way up the capitalist line? Well, it does. Y'know, profit was great as long as it was the reward for innovation and hard work. But when the generational progess of the capitalist family turned it into an unearned reward for,..... nothing,...... then capitalism had turned a corner, and it had gone the wrong way.

[leftofthedial]

1. fits my experience with wealthy families to a "t"

and the problem gets exponentially worse as one "climbs" the capitalist ladder

the plutocracy needs to be eliminated.

The french took out about 17,000 aristocrats. With our current population that would be about 195,000. That sounds about right.

[Hardrada]

9. Lenin eliminated the Russian aristocracy which was

perhaps 30,000 or so. It was a lower number than I had thought. He said a communist leader of commissar could replace an aristocrat and actually get some work done. I know that Stalin killed off the first rank of communists but there were enough left to lead the state and stop Hitler.

[Selatius]

2. I'm pretty sure that's what's happening to the US right about now.

It's grown so vast that it's difficult to maintain "the empire," as it were. There are various competing interests fighting over the empire. As they fight, things that need to be addressed are overlooked. Corruption increases. Living standards decrease. Government services start decaying or are dismantled. Yet, the machinery drones on under the increasing weight. The people who live under it grow upset and demoralized. They turn off and tune out the problems and simply concentrate on daily living. Meanwhile, everything else slowly gets worse.

Eventually, the machinery breaks down. The empire crumbles, sometimes slowly or sometimes quickly, and a period of unrest begins as power is shifted around until a new paradigm is achieved. The old order is removed, and a new one is installed, and history seems to come full circle back to the beginning.

It almost sounds like the history of Rome.

[peacetheonlyway]

3. your story is great,

so let's expand

take your story a little further. that 4 stores is now down to one store,
called the US government and the family is bush. (the original entrepreneur was a
man who sold weapons to WWII hitler, grandpa you might say.

and now the coke snorter and his friends (bush and cheney, rice, etc.) are trying to live
off that one store except that the only thing keeping it afloat is billions in Chinese T-Notes
and the willingness of some arabs to let the oil currency be the US dollar when everyone else
has gotten off the weak dollar currency system.

now it is more magnified and more accurate, that we have a failed capitalism in America
because there is no one left who is an entrepreneur. even bill gates was never truly an entreprenuer
but great at stealing things.

until we reinvigorate the true american spirit of capitalism and entrepreneurship, bush and his
cronies will snort every penny left in our US treasury and our economy up his nose and leave the rest
of us to support his illegitimate and by now quite irate bunch of criminals used to living on his
promise of more contracts, more money.

[wtmusic]

4. A powerful argument for a stiff inheritance tax

and a good story to boot.

[Parisle]

6. It's really a very honest account

--- As Dave Barry would say, "I am not making this up." I've seen it more than a few times,.. and it suddenly occurred to me that I ought to throw in this one additional qualifier to the "composite" tale: These people NEVER listened to my recommendations.

[Jack Sprat]

5. Are you telling me......

that BushCo wants to eliminate the estate taxes to support the habits of coke-snorting zombies? Holy Cow! Just when I was starting to work up a teardrop for the privileged class. ;-)

[NJCher]

7. well, here's my glimpse

I used to work with a numbe of large U.S. corporations. These companies tell their suppliers what they can charge.

Yep, they get into little rooms once a year and decide what the price of Widget X is going to be. The supplier doesn't tell the big corporation wheat their price is--the corporation tells the supplier how much he/she can charge.

I'm talking about large, highly visible corporation whose products many of use every day.

This is capitalism? I don't think so.



Cher

[ProudDad]

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[undergroundpanther]

8. Agreed

It's disgusting.
But as long as inheritance happens and that idea of having your kids "do better" than you did, and do nothing to better themselves , by themselves this shit will continue.
Raising crops of narcissistic addict parasites is the legacy of wealth.
True..

[The Backlash Cometh]

16. Having your kids "do better."

Let me tell you something. Sometimes we don't do our kids any favors by putting them in an environment just because it's the most affluent one we can afford.

Without divulging too much, I have a nephew who is raised in a very elite part of Miami and his view of the world is so screwed up already because everybody he plays with has more than he does and is also whiter skinned. This kid is brilliant, but he's growing up in that kind of environment. Elite parochial Private school. His mama keeps him very entertained, doing as many "stimulating" things as possible. (I don't necessarily disagree with that last part.)

However, he came to visit us just once, and unfortunately, I didn't have as many things to keep him busy and my kids were really no help since they were much older than he was and were going to school that week and also had lots of extra-curricular activities that he could not participate in. But at the end of his visit, he asked how it was possible that anybody would want to play with my kids at all, because they didn't have good toys. We're talking about the expensive video games, big screen t.v.s, trampolines, mini cars etc. We don't have that kind of money but those were the things that he was used to seeing in his neighborhood.

And some parents are just plain criminal, intentionally raising the next generation of selfish Americans. I was never so glad when we severed relationships with one bitch of a woman, who watched as her daughter allowed my daughter to set the itinerary of the day. She was not happy that her daughter had played a submissive role, so she told her daughter, "Susie Q, just remember, there can be only one dominant one in a relationship. You decide who that will be." Wouldn't you know it, that family is the one which has been breaking the rules around here to take Association property. Now it's THAT kind of thinking, which is destroying communities.

[Faux pas]

10. Fascinating and sickening at the same time. If the parents weren't

so indulgent and maybe made the little parasites survive on their own,(say until their 40th B-day) there just might be something left to pass on. Maybe they might learn to appreciate things and maybe the original entrepreneur might live a longer and happier life.

Thanks for the insight, it confirms what I've suspected all along.

[TreasonousBastard]

11. I've always thought it was the third generation that...

ended up blowing the family fortune-- the second often was close enough to the business, and groomed by the founder to take over.

But, it makes sense that the second is now the one to blow it more often than not-- I've seen a lot of spoilage of kids because "I grew up with nothing and I want my kids to have it all."

[Parisle]

12. No, that may often be the case,.....

--- Second generations DO often handle things reasonably well,...... That's why a "composite" story was used. It just depends. Currently I'm dealing with a Second Generationer who took over and ran things for about fifteen years, but who was also using salary and "allowance" to maintain a permanent, personal prostitute on the side. Your inference on the subject is equally correct. From a family and business standpoint, they lead to the same place, however.

[annabanana]

13. This is a great take on it...

I have worked at a couple of such companies. Three actually. I was pretty far down the totem-pole in each case.

One was a publishing firm. They managed to forgo disaster because a first generation American son-in-law was a natural entrepreneur, and came from a country that was poor enough that he knew a good thing when he saw it. He rescued it from a dissolute ivy league waster..

The second was a company that imported bangles, beads, watches and tchochkes (sp?) from the Far East, back in the late 70's, early 80's. They still had a factory floor where cheap jewelry was assembled from imported bits and pieces. The first son, while not an addict, was a total self absorbed idiot... He insisted on parking his incredibly expensive italian sports car on the factory floor..(a Testosteronne - or whatever that thing is..) The company has been gone for about 20 years.

The third was a garment factory. I came in shortly after the founder had passed away. It was a small place, and a sweat shop. Italian women did piecework and a dignified Jamaican named Noble was the cutter. The father was much beloved on the floor. He had apparently be very flexible and generous to the workers and he was missed. The older workers had a kind of motherly feeling for Jr... for awhile. But he cut every possible corner, shaved minutes off the time cards of the few hourly workers and he managed to mistreat everyone who had been indulgent within the first year after his father's death. It too is long gone. I hope the kid's in jail.

It wasn't drugs that messed up the following generations.. it was a sense on entitlement and an inability to recognized what their fathers had achieved.

[NashVegas]

14. My Experience Is With the 3rd + Generation Wanna Be Creatives

Who start up or insert themselves into creative businesses (radio, audio, graphics) for some sort of fulfillment wish and turn the place into a charity operation.

[The Backlash Cometh]

15. Wow, wow, just wow.

I wish there was somewhere we could give this a permanent place on DU, because it is so well written and something that we can attach our common observations.

I can see everything you wrote develop as a commentary on why America has lost its edge. I also saw the seeds of that destruction back in the 80s when Affirmative Action gave me one of the few slots into a very elite school. (The slot was all that AA gave me, because the tuition was completely paid by my parents.)

Mind you, the professors were worth all the negative experiences I had watching the children of the wealthy pretend they were preparing for a career in "hard work." And mind you, there were some pretty wonderful rich kids who broke all the rules. However, what I did get to see up close and personal, was how I never had one second to fluff off, while they were out planning for one sorority soiree after another. For some, that sorority life really was in preparation for the networking that would take place after school where their connections were all they needed to get a front row seat to the "whisper numbers."

But, for most, some classes were easy to fluff off, because it wasn't directly related to what they were going to be doing after school: Run daddy's business. They would never really know what it's like to compete for a limited spot for some company. Their real schooling would be an internship in daddy's business, where they might start as a manager in training, then move to open a new franchise. Those were the success stories. But actual school, college, where I was sweating it out every minute of every day, was just a rite of passage for them. And it made everything that much more depressing to accept my first burn-out job after college, when I realized that I had bottomed out, as far as job advancement was concerned, partly because of a lack of connections and lack of good career guidance. Burn out is easy to reach when you realize that, unless you have some unique gift or phenomenal training, you're just going to end up selling perfume bottles over a department store counter.

Anyways, that IS what's wrong with America. The hardest workers. the best and the brightest are not really the ones running the country. Only the shrewdest, the greediest and the ones who are in the best position to make sure that the status quo doesn't get shaken too much to interfere with their stock dividends.

By the way, the only exception to your experience, is a family business where all the siblings are part of the growing business. They do work very hard, every one of them. When daddy retires, it will continue to grow because everyone is properly involved, and none of them went to the dark side, preferring drugs or the over-affluent lifestyle. Now THAT's the kind of successful American work experience that I can support.

[leftofthedial]

17. they kill the business and put real people out of work

but they have "capital" to keep their zombie-hood going

the sense of superiority and entitlement is really something amazing. It gets worse and worse with each generation too. The kids of the kids, in my experience, are likely to be complete monsters.

[bvar22]

18. That is ONE story of American Capitalism.

There are many others:

At the turn of the century an entrepreneur starts a business in small town America....a grocery, drug store, hardware, notions, dry goods, or furnishings. The family is honest, hardworking, and makes a good living. The children go to school, and later work in the family business. They earn a good reputation, and the business is successfully passed down through several generations. The profits from thus business are spent locally so other small businesses prosper. And then Wal-Mart comes to town.


In the 1950's, a free thinking individual starts a small oilfield services company on the Gulf Coast (There were several thousands of these small family companies). The company is passed to a responsible, hardworking child. The company grows and prospers through the 70's. Then Halliburton comes to town.


3rd verse....Family Farm..... then agribusiness comes to town.


There are many reasons for the failure of business passed on to children, not just irresponsibility.
More family business have been crushed by BIG CORPO than slothful children.

[Parisle]

19. That is an admirable stating of an "alternative case"

--- And I salute you for pointing it out. It is correct in every sense. But my OP was intended to depict a principle, rather that a specific case,...... and I suspect that the Walmarts and Halliburtons and ADM's of the world ALSO have their generational disappointments and family parasites. I have never quite earned $100,000 in one year,.... but I know guys who are shrieking bloody murder because that is all the "allowance" they get for being total dead weight junkies. How many of those do you suppose crop up in the multi-billion, multi-national corporate families?

[Larry Ogg]

20. There is a book that describes this phenomenon in great detail called “Political Ponerology”.

In it there is a discussion about upward and downward social adjustments. Starting with the premise that all men are not created equal and Mother Nature plays a role in what our position in society was meant to be, psychologically speaking. Every one was not created to be a mathematical genius, renowned artist or musician, philosopher or an athletic superstar. Nor was everyone created to be a farmer or master carpenter, a mechanic, a factory worker on an assembly line, a salesman or a secretary. Everyone is created with a natural genetic ability to perform certain functions in society and education can enhance those natural genetic abilities, but it can’t create something that is not there.

In the example of the, “Smart and hard-working guy who starts a business... succeeds big-time... makes a small fortune for his family.” Allow me to continue the story from their, in my own words.
You are talking about some-one who was born with the desire, drive, determination, critical thinking skills and common sense needed to be successful in business. In addition this guy needed employee’s to do the jobs that required maybe much less critical thinking skills, but were born with the ability to be content and proficient at performing much simpler task, and didn’t want the hassle nor the desire of running there own business. One can’t help but to believe that a manager of a successful business has the ability to match an employee’s abilities with a specific job, as this could make a critical difference between the success and failure of any business. And keep in mind, ”Normal People are not happy in jobs that they are; over qualified for and are not challenged, or they are under qualified and are overwhelmed.”

Now take a good look at junior, the offspring of the successful business man. Junior spent his school years being the class clown, school mascot, and the little cretin who loved blowing up frogs with firecrackers. Junior’s grade average through all his school years was an astounding big “F”, but because Poppy had so much money he was able to buy Junior a “C average”, which of course made junior’s mommy very proud. Now keep in mind ”Junior is not a normal person as previously mentioned above, qualification to him has nothing to do with natural abilities, education or anything with big words, it’s all about inherity herevady in har i tance well its… you know what I mean, it’s daddy’s money, and how much you own, and who you know, not what you know that makes you qualified… you know... he he…

So it was, the day came when it was time for the smart and hard-working old business guy, (we’ll call him Poppy) who made a fortune for his family, to retire and hand the business over to Junior, whom Mother Nature gave the ability to be a grate circus clown, albeit they would have to keep him away from the small animals and anything pyrotechnic of course… So here’s Junior the new big boss over Poppy’s hundred million dollar business and he’s ready to have some fun! The first thing he knows is, that he has to do is get rid of all these guys in suits and ties that Poppy hired to manage the business, because they make him feel stupid, and they keep telling him what to do, wont laugh at his jokes and they keep hiding his firecrackers. So Junior fires the old managers and hires all his friends that know nothing about managing a business, but they did stay at a Holiday In last night, and they do love his unique sense of humor and things that explode. And over a period of a short time the once successful business went under (burnt down) and became the laughing stock of the whole world. Not quite what Poppy envisioned, but Junior and his friends really did have a good time.

[Parisle]

23. Y'know,.... I wasn't really talking about political stuff

--- What happens in rich families is pure human nature,..... as is much of what goes on in government, admittedly. We make the mistake of giving free reign to the people with money, when in fact, we ought to be controlling their every move.

[Larry Ogg]

24. Your right you weren’t talking about political stuff,

and for the life of me I can’t figure out why you posted this OP on a board that says “General Discussion: Politics”.
None the less I agree that’s its human nature for parents to provide the best possible advantage for there children, but it doesn’t excuse the fact that the same phenomena unquestionably exist, most sadly in politics.
Too bad if family fortunes are lost by incompetent heirs. But when incompetent heirs are handed over the rains of government, there are big big problems. The greatest example is the BFEE; it has everything to do with you OP. Just change the name of the family business, and the level of devastation, it really does work on a national / international scale. Inherited wealth plus stupidity, and connections trumps everything!

[Parisle]

26. Thanks, I guess

--- It is easy to see that the Constitution was written with the idea in mind of out-flanking the dark side of human nature. And only the dark side of human nature would find reason to contest what our Founding Fathers put into that national charter. But unfortunately, it does not really address the problem I described in the OP. Oh, and by the way,.. I don't really pay any attention to which "board heading" to which I post. I don't see the point.

[Sammy Pepys]

21. That really doesn't fit with most of the rich folks I know...

Most of the rich folks I know have two major breadwinners...they're power couples, if you will. Half of them don't have kids at all.

[ProudDad]

28. If they're working for salaries

or commissions then they ain't really "rich".

Most of the real rich are those who live off of the dividends from the assets they inhereted from their grandparents....

Nearly everyone else is "working class"...and most are a couple of paychecks away from the street...


Know Your Class 101

[Sammy Pepys]

29. Oh, they're definitely rich...

These folks make more in a month than many folks make in a year.

[ProudDad]

30. But they are still

NOT the ruling class.

They can be dropped and ostracized in a New York minute. The real "rich" are immune to that...

Of course, some of the nuevo riche whose assets are mainly in stocks (such as Gates and Waltons) could loose it all on the market...unlikely but they could...

But in the meantime, THEY call the shots -- not their hired guns...

[twiceshy]

22. There is an expression: sandals to sandals...

In three generations.

[Blue_Tires]

25. k+r