Good for them. Another couple of generations and young Kennedys might once again rediscover useful work. Reversion to the mean. In fact, I imagine many of today's young Kennedys already have, but they're not the ones we read about in the media because they're working rather than being celebrity dilettantes.
It is hard for trust fund families to instill a work ethic in rising generations. This is a very old story: shirtsleeves to shirtsleeves and all that. I understand the problem. Working for relative chump change at something you don't love is torture when your trust fund checks just keep rolling in. The pay isn't the problem; the problem is boredom when the spur of necessity is absent and you're looking at 40 hours of tedium a week at some task you really don't care for and don't need to do.
Status competition often becomes the substitute motivator. People will work ferociously hard to gain prestige, but that leads to its own problems … and leads to nothing but futility and frustration if it's not coupled with genuine talent.
I have great respect for trust fund kids who bury themselves in a library and emerge decades later as distinguished historians, who live in a lab and do useful things in science, or who at least open up a creditable crunchy granola business in a little New England town. But for those of mediocre talent, wealth can be a trap. The Kennedys have provided too many examples.
Status competition by mothers destroys the kids
Scintillating prose. It sings.
Well put. Your comment rings true.
“But for those of mediocre talent, wealth can be a trap. The Kennedys have provided too many examples. “
Then they go into “public service”, and if that isn’t a euphemism I don’t know what is.
The statement about them helping is to make it look like they are just like you and me, except we must pay our way and theirs. I wonder if helping means yelling at the help, getting in their way and making sure the help knows it’s place.