Inheritance or Incapacitation?

     Sometimes I wish I was rich. It gets frustrating when I see my friend's parents willing to shell out thousands of dollars just to send them on a one week trip to Europe, paying for huge expensive cable TV packages, and buy them any clothing they want. I do not mean to say I am poor, and I do not think any of my friends could be considered rich. But, it just seems that many parents are a great deal more willing to drop such huge amounts of money, which is often, money they can barely afford to loose. Growing up, my parents have taught me to be very responsible with money. We are a middle class household, and my father who worked on the fire department for thirty years has now retired. My mother works part-time at our city's library and tutors high school students for the SATs so we can get a bit of extra money. We go on vacation every year, and if I am in need of something, my parents are able to buy it. They put my sister through college, and while I am now attending M.C.L.A., my brother is a senior at UMASS Amherst, all of which they are paying for. However, we have never had cable TV, my parents would never pay for the cell phone bills of my older siblings and I, and they would never dream of buying any of us a car. Basically, while we do have money, we just tend to save most of it. This is a very good thing, especially seeing as so many people are in debt in America today, and we are not at all. Nevertheless, I will admit it has been hard to grow up watching friends have things that I do not, and I believe everyone struggles with this to a certain extent. All of this responsibility surrounding money though, means that I am all the better prepared for the future. Many times children of millionaires or billionaires are not so lucky.
      Everything I have just explained might seem irrelevant, but it is not, for it is what I thought about when we had a discussion on inheritances in class this week. CEOs are obviously paid astronomically high salaries, and many times their children inherit their companies immediately after they pass away. But, are inheritances a blessing or a curse? I have occasionally followed the rich children of America's big businessmen through entertainment news. Often, they are crazy partiers and lack any knowledge of the company, responsibility, and money itself. These children often take over these gigantic companies though, and this does not make any sense. In Harris's article, he mentions that there should be equal opportunity for those who want the job of a CEO. This is incredibly true, for I believe everyone in America would rather have a multimillion dollar corporation in the hands of someone who is qualified, rather than an inexperienced young adult. I think inheritances can be a curse, and it is good that some millionaires refuse to pass their fortunes on to their children. After all, many of these people have worked very hard to get to the point in their lives that they are at. It is simply unfair to just hand to their children what they spent the past fifty years trying so hard to get. Children should get at least a small amount of possessions or money from their parents, for many parents wish to provide for their families even after they are gone. But, millions of dollars and a huge company should definitely not be passed onto the children unless they are qualified and responsible. So, after all, I really am glad that I was raised as comfortably middle class as I was! What skills do you think you would have and what skills do you believe you would lack if one of your parents was a millionaire?