Author: Morgan Housel

Translator: Rex Liu

18th-century economist Adam Smith once wrote that in the Scottish Highlands, it was not uncommon for a mother to give birth to twenty children, yet fewer than two would survive.
That’s life. And whether you are poor or rich, the outcome is pretty much the same. Queen Anne of England had 18 children, none of whom lived to adulthood. U.S. President James Garfield died in 1881, partly because the leading doctors of the time still didn’t believe in bacteria. Two weeks before Franklin Roosevelt’s death, his blood pressure soared to 260/150, and his doctors were almost at a loss—at that time, even the most basic blood pressure medications didn’t exist.

If you could show these people a modern grocery store, they would be stunned into fainting. They can’t understand that today’s biggest shopping challenge is choosing one of 19 types of jam or buying papaya in Minnesota in January. But what would be most unbelievable to them is the pharmacy deep inside the store—in their eyes, it’s pure magic.

So, what would their reaction be?
I don’t think it would be “You’re so impressive.”
More likely, it would be: “You’re so spoiled.”

They would watch us impatiently waiting in line at the pharmacy, then mock us for being ungrateful for those miraculous pills.
They can’t understand that, in the face of such abundant material wealth, we complain about food prices instead of being amazed by prosperity itself.

Ironically, each generation works hard and innovates constantly to create a more prosperous world for future generations. But when you observe how these descendants interact with their world, your feelings might shift from pride to disappointment. Our children don’t suffer in the way we did, and they might not even be grateful for it.

This is a common problem. Wealthy families are always pondering how to support their children without turning them into spoiled brats. Society as a whole has long been disappointed in young people—seeing them as lazier and more entitled than their elders.

I’ve been thinking about this, especially regarding money and my own children. Here are my thoughts.

A few months ago, I was chatting with a friend. His parents are immigrants who came to America and struggled to make ends meet with low-wage jobs.
Now, his children are grown. From what I understand, my friend feels guilty—despite being a college-educated white-collar worker, he doesn’t have to endure the hardships his parents did. His parents taught him thrift and resilience, but if the kids see their father living relatively comfortably, can they still learn those same qualities?

He gave an example: as a child, he borrowed all his books from the library; now, his young daughter demands—and gets—$15 Taylor Swift books, filling her room with them.

My response is: if we could talk to his immigrant parents, I bet they would say—“That’s exactly our goal.”
The whole point of working so hard is to elevate the family’s status, so that one generation must toil to get by, while the next can enjoy Taylor Swift books. The way their granddaughter is now spoiled isn’t a side effect of wealth, but the goal itself.

In other words: some parents’ ultimate goal is to work hard enough to give their descendants a life—by the standards of their ancestors—that might be considered spoiled.

Just like wealth, “being spoiled” has no objective definition; everything is relative.

Looking at my own children, I realize they are indeed spoiled compared to my childhood.
But can my grandparents say the same about me? They worried about polio, scarlet fever, and a host of issues I never even thought about.
And their grandparents, could they say the same about them? Back then, transportation was only by horse, and a bad harvest could mean losing children—lives that seem unimaginable just one or two generations later.

One often overlooked point is: when a generation’s life becomes relatively more prosperous, their lives don’t objectively become easier; they simply shift their worries to higher-level problems—issues that previous generations didn’t see as urgent or worth worrying about.

One generation worries about food and shelter.
The next doesn’t have to worry about eating and housing but worries about safety.
The following generation is safe and worry-free but concerned about disease.
After that, they solve health issues but start worrying about education.
The next has basic education but begins to worry about work-life balance.

And so on. This is the essence of John Adams’ famous quote, which I’ll paraphrase: “I study war so that my children can have the leisure to study engineering; they study engineering so that their children can have the leisure to study philosophy; and the children of philosophers will have the leisure to study art.”

I hope my children and grandchildren won’t have to worry about cancer like we do. I hope they have access to advanced technology that makes work easier. I hope the petty frictions we face daily disappear for them. I hope their energy supplies are so abundant they’re considered limitless.

Is this being spoiled? Maybe. But when you describe it this way, you might think of another word—perhaps “fortunate” or “blessed.”

Or maybe, “beneficiaries of the hard work of those before us, who now have the leisure to solve new problems.”

And that’s exactly who we are today.