A New York Magazine feature this month (link via Kottke) discusses the growing problem of how the conscientious super-wealthy can raise successful, hard-working children. 

The article primarily concerns what used to be called "new money," the younger, richer generation that has become wealthy through its own hard work and now fears creating a wave of entitled, lackadaisical offspring with none of their parents' values.  Ironically, the article characterizes American blue bloods as having long ago discovered how to deal with (or at least ignore) this problem:

American blue bloods, perhaps, have a strategy for coping with their inherited wealth—wearing the ratty sweaters, pursuing the eccentric hobbies—namely, pretending it doesn’t exist. But this strategy is hardly applicable to any generation that makes its fortune.

So is the WASP tendency toward Yankee frugality and faux-poverty a successful coping mechanism, or a creepy delusion?  I can't honestly say that I have seen any indication of psychological or socio-economic enlightenment among the few fey, locked-jaw New England trust fund beneficiaries that I have personally met.  But the blue blood mentality does have a grain of truth to it: the fact that one has an enormous fortune does not necessarily mean that one must act is if one is from a different species.  You don't necessarily have to buy the jet, live in the gated community, or send the kids to the most obscurely elite prep school in the nation.  You can be rich and still be normal.