Читать книгу The Wealth Hoarders - Chuck Collins - Страница 8

We don’t get money. We have money.

Former Massachusetts Governor Bill Weld

Thirty wealthy people sit in a circle of couches and comfortable old chairs. I am one, a participant at a weekend conference for people with inherited wealth, sponsored by a local family office and a foundation. It is 1983 and I am 23 years old. A few years earlier, I learned that I would inherit a substantial amount of money upon turning 25 as the scion of a successful Midwestern meatpacking family. I quickly suppressed this information and went about my life.

Now, having finished college, I am finally coming to terms with this reality. But I’m perplexed and actively wrestling with the ethics of inherited wealth. When a friend tells me about this conference, I jump at the chance to learn more and meet others in the same boat. The meeting room is in a stone mansion on a hundred-acre estate that had been previously owned by the Stevens family, including textile baron J. P. Stevens, who made their money from wool and cotton. The house, surrounded by lawns and stonewalls, is perched on a hill at the end of a long driveway, about thirty miles northwest of Boston. Water sprinklers swoosh constantly outside the window, ensuring the acres of grass remain green, even through hot August days.

A tall lanky woman named Melanie stands in front of an easel, writing down topics for discussion. She is the only black person in a room of white people. Participants are encouraged to suggest topics not already on the agenda and form small discussion groups. Some people suggest, “setting up a family foundation,” and “teaching children about money and values.”

I raise my hand. “I know everyone says that you should never give away your principal.” [This is the asset foundation of one’s wealth that generates income.] “But why not?” I say. “I’ve been wrestling with the ethics of continuing to hold onto wealth. Would anyone else like to talk about giving away assets?” The question hangs in the air for a moment.

“I would,” volunteers Edorah, smiling warmly from across the room. The two of us had already spent most of the previous evening talking about the idea.

“That would be …” flutters an older woman named Dee, craning forward in her chair. “That would be utterly foolish.”

“Yes,” agrees Catherine, a friend of Dee. “Don’t ever touch the principal.”

“Hold your horses,” Melanie interjects with a chairwoman’s authority. “They can talk about whatever they want. Are there others that want to join Chuck and Edorah?”

Two others raise their hands, and we are assigned a meeting room. Dee and Catherine join our group of four in order to convince us we are loony. “We are both grandmothers,” Dee explains. “We know a thing or two.”

“What will you prove by committing class suicide?” asks Catherine. Her face is flushed and agitated – and she eyes me through her thick glasses as if I am about to detonate a bomb.

“Give away your income,” counsels Dee more calmly. “But for God’s sake, don’t touch the principal.” Her silvery blond hair is pulled back in a bun and she flashes beautiful white teeth. Dee is from a well-known New England family and can attest to the benefits of holding onto money through multiple generations.¹

Catherine and Dee dominate the conversation with stories of imprudent cousins who “invaded their principal” with “hare-brained” investment and charitable schemes. One of Catherine’s cousins had been duped into signing over part of a trust to a religious cult. “Don’t do anything foolish today that you’ll regret tomorrow,” they repeat like a Greek chorus.

A few days after the conference, Dee “rings me up,” as she says, and invites me to lunch at the Harvard Club on Commonwealth Avenue in Boston. I am planning to be in Boston on business and eagerly agree. I appreciate that Dee is interested in my dilemma, even if she disagrees with me. For years I have been simmering inside about having wealth, but I’ve had few chances to talk with others who have both money and a sense of responsibility about what to do with it. Dee is a full-time philanthropist, and a woman who has wrestled with privilege for six decades and made seemingly thoughtful choices. I wonder if her path holds any guidance for me.

I have never been to the Harvard Club. I iron a shirt, fuss over my tie and walk down the broad boulevard of Commonwealth Avenue in Boston’s Back Bay, where the median is lined with sculptures of literary figures and political leaders. On each side are four- and five-story homes, granite slab and brick behemoths with large picture windows and ivy. Some are divided into apartment buildings or condominiums, but many are still occupied by single families. Approaching the Harvard Club reminds me of another important aphorism of privilege – along with “never touch the principal” – which is, “always look like you belong.” I stride confidently past the large awning and doorman at the Harvard Club.

I meet Dee in the club lounge. She strides in, hair long, shoulder bag swinging. She is wearing a crisp knee-length black skirt and a breezy white blouse with a golden basket lapel pin that she explains is a symbol of Nantucket Island, where she has a “cottage.” The lounge is remarkably free of cigar smoke and captains of industry. There are several low-rise chairs and fairly ordinary people – men not even wearing ties – sitting and reading newspapers.

“Dee,” I whisper, “Where are the Monopoly Man plutocrats and the wingback chairs?”

“Oh yes,” she deadpans. “They are in the gentlemen’s smoking lounge pulling the hidden levers of power. They don’t allow the ladies in there.” We enter the dining room, and Dee waves to several other women she knows. “I have to tell you a joke,” she says, glancing up from her menu with a puckish grin. Her face is tanned and freckled since I’d seen her a few weeks earlier.

Dusk is settling in over the Charles River, and a proper Boston gentleman is walking home from his day’s duty at the Brahmin law firm of Prescott, Cabot, and Newell. As he climbs Beacon Hill toward his stately red brick row house, he spies a lady of the night, standing in a shadowy doorway. As he passes, he averts his eyes, but not before recognizing his dearest first cousin.

“Addy,” he stutters. “Addy, is it you?”

“Yes Arthur,” she whispers with shame.

“But Addy … why? Why you?”

“Why, Arthur,” his cousin responds. “It was either this or invade the principal.”

We both roar with laughter. Dee is right about one thing. I am naive about “principal,” “assets,” “income,” and “inherited legacies.” But Dee is prying my eyes open to the world of wealth preservation. “Chuck, you can do a lot of good if you hold onto the money.” Dee smiles. “As the corpus grows, you have more income that you can give away.”

“Corpus?” I am stuck on the word.

“You know … the body … the principal.”

“I can’t help interrupting, but that word,” I shake my head. “When I hear ‘Corpus’ I think of ‘Corpus Christi’.”

“Yes, of course,” chuckles Dee. “The body of Christ. Like the little wafer I palm once a week down at old Trinity Church.” I know that Dee is a member of Trinity Church and serves on several church committees. But she is no stuffy WASP former debutante.

“I understand the theory,” I continue. “The principal is thy fount. It is the gift that keeps giving. It is the goose that lays the golden egg. You don’t barbecue the goose.”

Dee looks at me with a mix of bemusement and sadness. “What’s wrong with preserving an asset?” Where do I begin? I think. I picture my older friend Juanita Nelson standing in her two-room cabin talking about usury and the immorality of people with mountains of wealth living off interest. Where did that income come from?

I think about the Bernardston mobile home tenants and other low-income people I work with, who take second jobs to pay the high interest rates on their homes. I want to draw their voices into the conversation.

“I don’t want to live off other people’s labor.”

“Oh Chuck, people need access to credit,” Dee says, missing my point. “Borrowing and interest are what makes the world go around.”

“Not the world I want to live in.” I start to talk about my views on wealth and poverty in society, but Dee steers the conversation back to the personal.

“Do you feel bad about having money?” she asks.

“Well, maybe, because I had nothing to do with earning it.”

“Guilt is a dead end,” she nods with certainty.

“Dee, isn’t there a part of guilt that is okay, that’s sort of a sign of our humanness?” I am struggling for the right words. “Maybe guilt is the wrong word, but don’t you feel something when you see the distance between your own good fortune and the suffering of others?”

“There is nothing good about guilt,” she pronounces, skating past my words. I sense this is in the pantheon of rich people’s aphorisms along with “never touch the principal” and “if you have to ask ‘how much?’ you can’t afford it.”

“But what about being … responsible?”

“Well, of course, I believe in responsibility, but Chuck, do you feel responsible for all the world’s suffering?” I hear slight mocking in her question, in a way I’ve heard people dismiss those who “want to change the world.”

“I want to be responsible about how my own income is earned. And I do feel responsible for doing what we can to alleviate suffering.”

“No Chuck, you and I are not responsible for the horrible suffering.” She sighs. “But we can each do our little part.” She starts to talk about the good work funded by her charity.

“I’m not really interested in philanthropy,” I interrupt gently, not wanting to be disrespectful. “Giving is important, of course. But it seems the first step is not to unfairly benefit from the current rules of the game.”

“Fairness is complicated,” Dee says. “Fairness for who?”

“Fairness for those who are left out by the current system – people who don’t own wealth and assets.”

“Are you a Marxist?” She eyes me.

“No, I thought I was being a Christian. Dee, I don’t believe the state should own businesses. But I do think there is a class system, and I’ve seen how it squeezes some people …”

She interrupts me: “There are good rich people and evil rich people. There are good poor people and evil poor people. It’s not as simple as you think.”

“Yes, Dee, of course.” I feel a wave of doubt. Maybe I am too idealistic. Maybe I am … foolish. Our salads and fish arrive, but I am so absorbed I hardly notice. Dee asks me what has given me these ideas. I describe my experience working with mobile home park residents and low-income tenants. I tell her about a group of tenants in Waterbury Connecticut who are organizing to save and buy their apartments. Dee listens with interest, munching on her food.

“Think of the money you could raise to solve these problems,” Dee says.

“But Dee, this is not about charitable giving – it is about returning to people what is rightfully theirs to start with. I want to address the roots of the problems, not just send charity band-aids. I want to have a bigger impact.”

“That’s good,” she affirms. “That’s right. But Chuck, you are a little naive … and selfish to be considering distributing your assets.”

“Selfish?” I feel stung. I have hardly touched my fish and Dee’s plate is empty.

“Come visit me next week at our family office,” she smiles, paying for the lunch with her initials on a white slip of paper. “We can talk some more then.” We say goodbye on the sidewalk of Commonwealth Avenue. It is an oddly dissatisfying conversation, between my still-evolving thoughts and Dee’s authoritative certainty. Over the next several months I see Dee at several events and even go to a party at her house. Each time she repeats her invitation to visit her at her “family office.” I am eager for another discussion, so we set a time.

I know about trust departments, like the division of the National Bank of Detroit that manages my personal treasure trove. But I have never heard of a “family office” – an entire organization dedicated to one family’s enterprise of wealth preservation and management. Dee’s family office is located in a downtown building and has the innocuous-sounding name of “North Haven Associates.” On the appointed weekday afternoon, I sign in with the security guard and show my driver’s license when asked for it – highly unusual in the early 1980s. I take the elevator to the twenty-first floor and ring a silver doorbell beside the office door. A receptionist leads me down a hallway of modern filing cabinets to Dee’s office.

Dee stands up from a Danish Modern teak desk to welcome me with a peck on the cheek. Her hair is pulled back, and she is wearing glasses for the first time since I’d met her, which she places on her desktop. “I have another joke for you,” she says with her now familiar grin. “Why don’t white Anglo-Saxon protestants engage in multiple-partner sex orgies?”

I am stunned. I can’t believe I am hearing this from her. “Why?” I sputter.

“Too many thank you notes.” She slaps her cheek in mock astonishment. Dee’s salty humor and warmth are disarming my cartoon-like image of Boston Brahmins. Even though we are unrelated, Dee is willing to adopt me as a long-lost nephew from a Midwestern branch of the family – and teach her hapless relation the “wealth facts of life.”

“What happens here?” I ask Dee, gazing out her window at the islands of Boston Harbor.

Dee explains that she keeps a desk at the family office, “for my correspondence and stuff.” She grins again. “Lots of thank you notes.” She takes me into the hallway and points out pictures of her ancestors. There are black and white pictures, mostly of white men, wearing suits or holding up large fish in rugged fishing camps. From the photos, I get an impression that some of the family wealth came from timber a long time ago.

“The family office is where our extended family comes together to manage our funds and charitable foundations.” We pass a room filled with wooden filing cabinets. I imagine them full of trust agreements and deeds embossed with antiquated seals. The conference room has padded leather chairs and a polished oak table with a silver water pitcher sitting on a teak tray. More family portraits and dark bookcases with law books and financial reports line the walls. An enormous picture window looks north to the Mystic River and the Tobin Bridge. I am mesmerized to see tiny trucks and cars lined up at the tollbooths.

“How many family offices are there like this?”

“In Boston?” Dee says, pondering my question. “Maybe several hundred serving the established New England families. There is an association of family offices. But most families use a reputable lawyer or a full-service firm, like Fidelity.” Dee explains that the principal activities of the office are trust and tax planning and distributing money to charities.

Like the silos of grain I grew up around in Michigan, these are Boston’s great warehouses of wealth. Billions and billions of dollars of paper wealth – land deeds, stock certificates, partnership agreements, wills, bonds, generation-skipping trusts – all entombed within comfortably appointed offices like this. “How do people find out about this?” I ask. I have no idea. It is a silly question the moment it leaves my mouth.

“Find out? Well, it’s not a secret,” says Dee. “But we don’t seek publicity. There is no reason.”

“What about the charitable foundations? How do people know where to apply?”

“Some of them are listed at the Grantmakers Association. But for the most part, we call you – you don’t call us.” Dee looks intently out the window. I know some money management firms seek clients by sponsoring Boston’s two public radio stations with taglines such as: “For over a century, helping successful families preserve and pass on wealth.” I am amused by all the euphemisms for wealthy, such as “prosperous,” “established,” and “successful.”

The whole time I am sitting in Dee’s conference room, I want to hover up and down State Street in Boston and float through walls to get a sense of the vastness of this wealth preservation machine – the thousands of men and women whose professional mission in life is to help the wealthy stay that way. They, in turn, earn high salaries and have comfortable lives. It is late afternoon, and from Dee’s window I can see hundreds of workers filing out of their office buildings toward commuter train and subway stations. I look at them with new eyes. These aren’t just generic office drones – many of them are Wealth Defense Industry workers.