The premise of the article is faulty, and the problem overstated. First, the author has to sleight-of-hand his way into his argument. He's worried that the "e

The premise of the article is faulty, and the problem overstated. First, the author has to sleight-of-hand his way into his argument. He's worried that the "elite" will use their money to ensure that their children get such a leg-up on the non-elite children that the non-elite children won't be able to compete and will become (I guess?) the modern equivalent of feudal peasants. Of course, he doesn't present any evidence that this is happening. He states that "the top 1% have seen their incomes soar", but this isn't a statement of a problem.[1] While it seems intuitive that privileged children will do better than non-privileged children, and even that a cadre of privileged children could keep the non-privileged children non-privileged for eternity, this just doesn't jibe with reality. For example, across just three generations, the complete loss of inherited wealth is nearly 90%. That means the great-grand children of nearly every founder who had a big exit will never see any of that money. (Note that this same argument is often made with respect to corporations as a basis for stringent anti-trust regulation. But, pick any 50 year increment of the DJIA and see how many companies on the list in the starting year were on the list at the end.) The "problem" of perpetual wealth a specter. Sure, you can point to the Rothschilds as an example of dynastic wealth. But (conspiracy theories aside) how many “wealthy” Rothschilds are there? Do they wield any real power? What about some of the other richest people in history? If dynastic wealth is a true problem, why aren’t the Hugheses, the Gettys, the Rockafeller’s the Carnegies, the Vanderbilts, the Mellons, and the Fords dominating world politics, finance or culture? (Interesting aside: many of these titans were actually dirt poor themselves before building their own fortunes.) It’s easy to take a small, 30-year slice of history and claim that, if things continue this way, surely the world will be hell in just a few more short years. Fortunately, it almost never works out that way. [1] See pg's article re "money is not wealth" here: http://www.paulgraham.com/wealth.html http://www.paulgraham.com/wealth.html)