From before: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11731890
The richest families in Florence in 1427 are still the richest (2016)
11–20 of 95 posts
Re: The richest families in Florence in 1427 are still the richest (2016)
#12This is purely anecdotal, but I live in Florence and know a couple of people from the "old-money" families and they are not rich by todays standard. They make a modest living renting out and managing the properties handed down through the generations and have to be frugal to make it work. Also, you should be very sceptical of any study made using Italian tax records as a data source :D
> They make a modest living renting out and managing the properties handed down through the generations and have to be frugal to make it work.
Those rich real estate owners are not frugal because they need to. They are frugal because they are smart. Don't judge their wealth before seeing their tax haven bank accounts.
Re: The richest families in Florence in 1427 are still the richest (2016)
#13This is purely anecdotal, but I live in Florence and know a couple of people from the "old-money" families and they are not rich by todays standard. They make a modest living renting out and managing the properties handed down through the generations and have to be frugal to make it work. Also, you should be very sceptical of any study made using Italian tax records as a data source :D
That describes everyone who is from old money. Those who aren't frugal and cost conscious see wealth exit their family within a few generations.
Re: The richest families in Florence in 1427 are still the richest (2016)
#14> taxpayers data in 1427 was digitized and made available online
Wow, the Renaissance was really ahead of its time.
Re: The richest families in Florence in 1427 are still the richest (2016)
#15This only feels surprising to me because in England, aristocratic houses tend to last only 100-200 years before losing their name by being subsumed into another, renaming due to politics, or vanishing in some other way. The House of Windsor only formally dates back to 1910. However if you trace it via the Mountbatten line, it'll rate as being as old as 1567, since it comes from a branch of the House of Hesse-Darmstad…
"The House of Windsor only formally dates back to 1910."
House of Wetten (1030) -> House of Hanover (1710) -> House of House of Saxe-Coburg and Goth (1826) -> House of Windsor.
There is a long lineage for the Windsors. Note the name change in 1918 from Saxe-Coburg to Windor to avoid diplomatic incidents by association. To get an idea of the breakdown of English aristocracy and estates, read this insightful article by Charles Spencer, "Enemy of the Estate" ~ http://www.vanityfair.com/news/2010/01/english-aristocracy-2...
"I am thinking that Florencian plutocratic houses simply never rename themselves."
Yes, that's what it looks like.
Re: The richest families in Florence in 1427 are still the richest (2016)
#16This makes for a great headline but fails to capture the entire picture which would include "families that are rich now and weren't before" and "families that were rich then and aren't now".
Another interesting statistic has families that were made wealthy in a short time by circumstance (lottery, judgement, IPO, etc) and are still rich, vs those that lost all of their wealth again.
It seems the best way to have the family wealth hang around is to create an institution with it that has as its mission to manage that wealth. Too much control by family members is strongly correlated with losing it all (which isn't too surprising when you think about it).
Wars and conflicts are the large redistributors of wealth. Not that it's a fun way to do so.
Re: The richest families in Florence in 1427 are still the richest (2016)
#17This makes for a great headline but fails to capture the entire picture which would include "families that are rich now and weren't before" and "families that were rich then and aren't now". Another interesting statistic has families that were made wealthy in a short time by circumstance (lottery, judgement, IPO, etc) and are still rich, vs those that lost all of their wealth again. It seems the best way to have the…
I don't disagree. On the other hand, if I had to pick a strategy for being rich in year n+1, I'd choose being rich in year n.
Re: The richest families in Florence in 1427 are still the richest (2016)
#18I don't understand this. Assuming no inbreeding, families that consistently have 2 kids roughly double in size every generation - a 600-year-old family would have 1 billion unique descendants by now. Of course, there is a ton of inbreeding - in the technical sense - but I still have a hard time imagining a 600 year continuous family line that isn't a pretty arbitrary chart of certain descendants here and there. It's very probable that some of them became poor too!
Re: The richest families in Florence in 1427 are still the richest (2016)
#19I don't understand this. Assuming no inbreeding, families that consistently have 2 kids roughly double in size every generation - a 600-year-old family would have 1 billion unique descendants by now. Of course, there is a ton of inbreeding - in the technical sense - but I still have a hard time imagining a 600 year continuous family line that isn't a pretty arbitrary chart of certain descendants here and there. It's…
Your maths seems off. 600 years at, say, 25 years per generation, yields 24 generations. Doubling each generation gives a factor of 2^24, or around 16 million, not 1 billion.
Re: The richest families in Florence in 1427 are still the richest (2016)
#20I don't understand this. Assuming no inbreeding, families that consistently have 2 kids roughly double in size every generation - a 600-year-old family would have 1 billion unique descendants by now. Of course, there is a ton of inbreeding - in the technical sense - but I still have a hard time imagining a 600 year continuous family line that isn't a pretty arbitrary chart of certain descendants here and there. It's…
Your maths seems off. 600 years at, say, 25 years per generation, yields 24 generations. Doubling each generation gives a factor of 2^24, or around 16 million, not 1 billion.
He just got to 2^30, which implies a 20 year generation time. Pretty reasonable before the 20th century.