Tuesday, September 20, 2011

1644 - Spend that money!!!!!

I plucked the following out of the middle of an article about sports teams in St. Louis. But as a stand alone this makes an interesting point. Could this be the problem with people with money not letting go and taking a risk?

He (Schoemehl, past St. Louis Mayor) said a vibrant city needs venture capital. St. Louis doesn't have people willing to risk fortunes to make fortunes, he said. That puzzled me. I thought there was a lot of money around here.

There is a lot of money around here, Schoemehl said, but it's inherited money. People who inherit money are careful with it because if they lose it, they're done. People who are still making money are more likely to be risk-takers. They're confident. They figure that if they lose money, they'll be able to make more. Without venture capital, we don't have a lot of New Money.


So people with inherited money are afraid to lose it because then they might have to ... WORK!!!!!!! Oh the horrors!! What would they do? Live like peons? Heaven forbid. Well maybe they are already peons. Just peons with money.

Here's the whole ARTICLE if you want to read about St. Louis sports problems.

 

5 comments:

Amanda said...

I was always under the impression that people who inherited money spent it much more freely because they don't know how hard it was to accumulate it in the first place.

I'm With Stupid said...

People who inherit money spend it on themselves, not on investing in their community. Mostly because they like to convince themselves that they earned it somehow. It's the old "People born on 3rd base who think they hit a triple" complex.

- Jay

Margaret (Peggy or Peg too) said...

Why does this not surprise me?
I am slowly turning into a cyncial shrew.

Dianne said...

I think people with money - and people in general - are becoming more and more self-centered

it's a world of what can I do for me

Claudia said...

Like somebody's mom we know well says--despite having Social Security, an annuity, farm income, and dividends on investments, "But you've got something coming in," meaning another person to whom she's speaking is earning a paycheck and she's not. I think there's a lot of guilt behind the self-centeredness for people in her "predicament." They know they've got it good, they didn't earn all of it, and they talk tough but really, in their heart of hearts, they fear God is going to get them for not sharing more than they do. President Obama tells them things their own consciences do, and it's bothering the Hell out of them.