Michael Barone has written a great
article on the political role of trustfund kids, he calls them the
trustfunder left. The article is pretty much what you'd imagine.
These guilt written folks are mostly Lefty Fundamentalists ... a
perfect ideology to give their life meaning and style. I doubt that
Barone has solid data to work with, the IRS data on dividends by
county wouldn't be reliable. Trustfund kids don't necessarily live
near their trust fund managers.
My contribution to this issue is that I
have known many hundreds of trustfund kids personally and been a
financial advisor to a few. (They came to me because I wrote The Seven Laws of Money.) I gave a talk to and spent a weekend
meeting an entire family of 130 Weyerhauser heirs. I dated a few
trustfund kids too.
Having a trust fund is a curse in 99%
of all the cases I've known. The trustfunders rarely know who they
are, have personalities without affect, seldom know what joy is, are
very confused about life and most trustfunders are overwhelmed with
guilt about their money.
The greatest source of pain for trustfund kids is that they are suspicious of everyone. Everyone, they believe, is trying to get their money. Often they are right. Their only friends, consequently, are other trustfund kids.
Trustfund kids have my sympathy. I hope Barone is wrong about trustfund kids having any influence on political life.