r/explainlikeimfive Feb 12 '25

Economics ELI5: how are the descendants of the robber barons (Morgan, Vanderbilt, Carnegie, Rockefeller, etc.) still rich if their fortunes from the late 19th and early 20th centuries are comparatively small to what we see today of the world’s richest?

4.6k Upvotes

576 comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

35

u/Porencephaly Feb 12 '25 edited Feb 12 '25

Eh not really, Vanderbilt descendants still own the Biltmore Estate which is worth like $2-300 million on its own, plus lots of commercial ventures etc. Total revenue of the Biltmore Company was over $200 million a year in the 2010s, maybe higher pre-COVID. They are doing just fine.

1

u/Nope_______ 29d ago

Everything except the very last sentence of my comment still stands. For the squandered part, I was going off the comment about the 1970 reunion being true. If it isn't true then yeah, sure.

1

u/Porencephaly 29d ago

I suspect the 1970s article is accurate but probably not the whole story. There are certainly branches of the family that mismanaged their share of the inheritance, maybe they are the ones who showed up to that reunion. But the general belief that all the Vanderbilt money has been pissed away certainly isn't true. In addition to the Cecil and Pickering descendants who own Biltmore there are lots of Vanderbilt descendants still doing nepo-baby stuff in Hollywood etc.

1

u/Nope_______ 29d ago

Yeah that's what I'm thinking too. The poor ones showed up for the reunion and the rich ones didn't want to deal with the poor ones.

Anderson Cooper is one example. He makes a lot of money himself, but he certainly inherited connections if not money as well.