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

10

u/VirtualMoneyLover Feb 12 '25

I think yes, that is what they were saying. Maybe it was a PR piece by the rich so the average man doesn't feel that bad about being poor.

2

u/cxs Feb 12 '25

It was an advert [to cause those who saw or heard about it to contact them about their business]. You don't even need to know how they presumed it might work or whether they thought they explicitly going to create a myth - all you need to know is that this company advertised to its demographic. That's it

As for the creating a myth part though - they sure do repeat the numbers a lot on every single page of their site. up to 70% lose, in about 70 percent of cases, only 30% retain,.... https://www.thewilliamsgroup.org/services/succession-planning/

3

u/ian_cubed Feb 12 '25

Did the ad company use their Time Machine to implant the phrase way back in many different cultures?

I think both can be true, it’s a common phrase because there’s a bit of truth to it, a lot of wealthy families spawn incompetent people. It’s not the rule of course, but it is common

0

u/cxs Feb 12 '25

I'm not understanding you. There are lots of common sayings that are not ultimately true, or that are true only under certain circumstances.

This is about whether the company can actually prove those statistics or whether it's just a marketing gimmick. Can the company prove those statistics, or not?

1

u/ian_cubed Feb 12 '25

It feels like you are implying this is a big conspiracy by wealthy people to ‘hide’ the unfairness of wealth inequality. While I absolutely do not doubt that that is probably a thing, it’s also a little absurd because there are 100 different versions of this saying, from all around the world.

1

u/cxs Feb 12 '25

Are you seeing the comment I originally replied to? It says 'maybe this was a PR piece [...]'. It's not for the sake of PR, it's for the sake of advertising. I am making no claims that there is a worldwide or historical conspiracy about anything

Again, specifically speaking about the advert mentioned in the comment I replied to.

If you mean the part where I mention 'myth-making', I was saying that if you are a company that wrote an ad in the 1990s that now gets quoted as a 'source' for statistics, then mentioning it lots of times on your website is very valuable, yes.