Inequality Helps Explain Why Young Billionaires Are So Boring

Warren Buffett (L), chairman of Berkshire Hathaway Inc., chats with other guests at the Allen & Company Sun Valley Conference at the Sun Valley Resort on July 12, 2014 in Sun Valley, Idaho. Photo by Scott Olson/Getty Images

Early in Warren Buffett’s life, his father failed to get hired at the family grocery store during the Great Depression. Without a job, and without any money after a run on the banks, the family of four ran up a tab of grocery bills at the store to put food on the table, and even then, his mother sometimes skipped meals. Leila Buffett, beset by stress and with a mind likely impacted by linotype fumes she inhaled as a child, would often berate her two small children.