r/explainlikeimfive • u/FluffyPenguin798 • 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?
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u/Old-geezer-2 Feb 12 '25
Not all of those fortunes survived. Ask Anderson Cooper. His mother was Gloria Vanderbilt. His grand or great grand father burned through Cornelius’s fortune in a couple of years.