AskReaders: What is something rich people buy that poor people know nothing about?

Sometime ago we asked our regular contributors through e-mail, What is something rich people buy that poor people know nothing about? We got many interesting response. Here are some of them. We have just copied and pasted their responses, not editing them in any way and most of the respondents have requested to stay anonymous, so no names will be published. Enjoy. The first answer is a quite big one. So bear with us.

1. I can answer this one. For some reason, I attract these people into my life. I don’t do anything super extraordinary. I am not famous. But I count many people with ultrahigh net wealth among my close friends and I have spent more time than even I can believe with 8 different billionaires. This is not just meet-and-greet time. This is small group and even one-to-one time. I dated the daughter of one billionaire several decades ago. So I have gotten a peek into this life.

Let’s get one thing out of the way. There are gradations of rich. I see four major breaking points:

Worth $10 million – $30 million liquid (exclusive of value of primary residence). At this level, your needs are met. You can live very comfortably at a 4-star/5-star level. You can book a $2000 suite for a special occasion. You can fly first class internationally (sometimes). You have a very nice house, you can afford any healthcare you need, no emergency financial situation can destroy your life. But you are not “rich” in the way that money doesn’t matter. You still have to be prudent and careful with most decisions unless you are on the upper end of this scale, where you truly are becoming insulated from personal financial stress. (Business stress exists at all levels). The banking world still doesn’t classify you as ‘ultrahigh net worth.

Net worth of $30 million – $100 million. At this point, you start playing with the big boys. You can fly private (though you normally charter a flight or own a jet fractionally through Net Jets or the like), You stay at 5 star hotels, you have multiple residences, you vacation in prime time (you rent a ski-in, ski-out villa in Aspen for Christmas week or go to Monaco for the grand Prix, or Cannes for the Film Festival – for what it’s worth, rent on these places can run $5000- $20,000+ per night). You run or have a controlling interest in a big company, you socialize with Congressmen, Senators and community leaders, and you are an extremely well respected member in any community outside the world’s great cities. (In Beverly Hills, you are a minor player at $80 million. Unless you really throw your weight around and pay out the nose, you might not get a table at the city’s hottest restaurant). You can buy any car you want. You have personal assistants and are starting to have ‘people’ that others have to talk to get to you. You can travel anywhere in any style. You can buy pretty much anything that normal people think of as ‘rich people stuff.’

$100 million – $1 billion. I know it’s a wide range, but life doesn’t change much when you go from being worth $200 million – $900 million. At this point, you have a private jet, multiple residences with staff, elite cars at each residence, ownership or significant control over a business/entity that most of the public has heard of, if it’s your thing, you can socialize with movie stars/politicians/rock stars/corporate elite/aristocracy. You might not get invite to every party, but you can go pretty much everywhere you want. You definitely have ‘people’ and staff. The world is full of ‘yes men.’ Your ability to buy things becomes an art. One of your vacation homes may be a 5 bedroom villa on acreage in Cabo, but that’s not impressive. You own a private island? Starting to be cool, but it depends on the island. You just had dinner with Senator X and Governor Y at your home? Cool. But your billionaire friend just had dinner with the President. You have a new Ferrari? Your friend thinks their handling sucks and has a classic, only-five-exist-in-the-world-type of car. Did I mention women? Because at this level, they are all over the place. Every event, most parties. The polo club. Ultra-hot, world class, smart women. Power and money are an aphrodisiac and you have it in spades. Anything thing you want from women at this point you will find a willing and beautiful partner. You might not emotionally connect, but damn, she’s hot. One thing that gets rare at this level? Friends and family that love you for who you are. They exist, but it is pretty damn hard to know which ones they are.

$1 billion. I am going to exclude the $10 billion+ crowd, because they live a head-of-state life. But at $1 billion, life changes. You can buy anything. Anything. In broad terms, this is what you can buy:

Access. You now can just ask your staff to contact anyone and you will get a call back. I have seen this first hand and it is mind-blowing the level of access and respect $1 billion+ gets you. In this case, I wanted to speak with a very well-known billionaire businessman (call him billionaire #1 for a project that interested billionaire #2. I mentioned that it would be good to talk to billionaire #1 and B2 told me that he didn’t know him. But he called his assistant in. “Get me the xxxgolf club directory. Call B1 at home and tell him I want to talk to him.” Within 60 minutes, we had a call back. I was in B1’s home talking to him the next day. B2’s opinion commanded that kind of respect from a peer. Mind blowing. The same is true with access to almost any Senator/Governor of a billionaire’s party (because in most cases, he is a significant donor). You meet on an occasional basis with heads-of-state and have real conversations with them. Which leads to

Influence. Yes, you can buy influence. As a billionaire, you have many ways to shape public policy and the public debate, and you use them. This is not in any evil way. The ones I know are passionate about ideas and are trying to do what they feel is best (just like you would). But they just had an hour with the Governor privately, or with the Secretary of Health, or the buy ads or lobbyists. The amount of influence you have can be heady.

Time. Yes, you can buy time. You literally never wait for anything. Travel? you fly private. Show up at the airport, sit down in the plane and the door closes and you take off in 2 minutes, and fly directly to where you are going. The plane waits for you. If you decide you want to leave at any time, you drive (or take a helicopter to the airport and you leave. The pilots and stewardess are your employees. They do what you tell them to do. Dinner? Your driver drops you off at the front door and waits a few blocks away for however long you need. The best table is waiting for you. The celebrity chef has prepared a meal for you (because you give him so much catering business he wants you very happy) and he ensures service is impeccable. Golf? Your club is so exclusive there is always a tee time and no wait. Going to the Superbowl or Grammy’s? You are whisked behind velvet ropes and escorted past any/all lines to the best seats in the house.

Experiences. Dream of it and you can have it. Want to play tennis with Pete Sampras (not him in particular, but that type of star)? Call his people. For a donation of $100,000+ to his charity, you could probably play a match with him. Like Blink182? There is a price where they would simply come play at your private party. Love art? Your people could arrange for the curator of the Louvre to show you around and even show you masterpieces that have not been exhibited in years. Love Nascar? How about racing the top driver on a closed track? Love science? Have a dinner with Bill Nye and Neil dGT. Love politics? Have Hillary Clinton come speak at a dinner for you and your friends, just pay her speaking fee. Your mind is the only limit to what is available. Because donations/fees get you anyone. The same is true with stuff. You like pianos? How about owning one Mozart used to compose music on? This is the type of stuff you can do.

Impact. Your money can literally change the world and change lives. It is almost too much of a burden to think about. Clean water for a whole village forever? Chump change. A dying child in need of a transplant? Hell…you could just build and fund a hospital and do it for a region.

Respect. The respect you get at this level is just over-the-top. You are THE MAN in almost every circle. Governors look up to you. Fortune 500 CEOs look up to you. Presidents and Kings look at you as a peer.

Perspective. The wealthiest person I have spent time with makes about $400 million/year. I couldn’t get my mind around that until I did this: OK–let’s compare it with someone who makes $40,000/year. It is 10,000x more. Now let’s look at prices the way he might. A new Lambo–$235,000 became $23.50. First class ticket internationally? $10,000 becomes $1. A full time executive level helper? $8,000/month becomes $0.80/month. A $10 million piece of art you love? $1000. Expensive, so you have to plan a bit. A suite at the best hotel in NYC $10,000/night is $1/night. A $50 million home in the Hamptons? $5,000.

There is literally nothing you can’t buy except love. Sorry to sound so trite, but it is nearly impossible to have a normal emotional relationship at this level. It is hard to sacrifice for another person when you are never asked to sacrifice anything. Money can solve all problems for someone, so you offer it, because there is so much else to do. Your time is SOOOO valuable that you ration it. And that makes you lose connections with people. Anyway, that is a really long answer, but I have a very unique perspective because I have seen behind the curtain of the great and mighty OZ. Just wanted to share.

2. I’m not rich, but I live in a very very rich town. My neighbor has a helicopter sitting in his back yard, that kind of rich. People here buy some truly ridiculous things.

Don’t you hate, for example, when you get on your private jet to go across the country, but as soon as you get there you need to go rent a car? Well, people around here don’t have that problem. They pay a service to ship their Ferraris and Lamborghinis to their destinations ahead of time so they can drive them when they get there. Yeah.

I’ve been to family parties and events where famous people are simply summoned and show up. I count this as something they buy, because I think they are very often paid. Literally two weeks ago Laura Bush made an appearance at my friend’s family barbecue. A month or so before that, Tom Selleck came by for a dinner party.

Sometimes they buy theme parks or things like that for a day. They just rent it out a while in advance and then throw a huge party. It’s just as awesome as it sounds, all of the workers are there, but there’s no lines. There is alcohol being served by waiters too, because it’s a private event.

They can buy lessons from professional athletes or dinners from famous chefs. Sure you’re not going to get Tom Brady to teach you how to play football, but Teddy Bridgewater? Sure, anytime. My neighbor’s kid, who absolutely hates golf, got personal lessons from Vijay Singh. For those of you that don’t know, he’s a pretty big deal. Rich people do this just to say they did though. They’ll get a professional dedicated instructor who coaches the likes of Tiger Woods if they want to actually get good, but they just want to say they got a lesson and a picture with Vijay Singh.

A lot of my friends have two or three exact copies of their phones in case one breaks. That in itself ins’t all that expensive, but it just goes to show their mentality towards money. Who needs a silly thing like insurance when you could just buy three more? Crack a phone? No problem, got a fresh one in my pocket. Crash your McLaren? No problem, got a fresh on in the garage.

Sometimes you have to buy ‘people.’ Not exactly what it sounds like, but say you’re having trouble with your homes computer system (most people here have huge house wide computer terminals, I have no idea how they work), well then you need to go out and buy a personal IT guy for your house. From now on, you are his only client and his job is to reset your router once a week. Rich people don’t have time for such things.

If you need literally anything as a rich person, you can basically buy it even if it doesn’t exist. A parking lot for example. My neighbor once had a big party, but didn’t have enough room for everyone to leave their exotic cars so my dad let him use our front yard to park some of them. Literally a day later he had our entire lawn resodded with grass imported from North Dakota. There are no problems if you have enough money, only creative solutions.

A lot of rich people live surprisingly modest too. They’re in the minority, but they exist. As a kid I used to work for a guy who owned an exotic car dealership. Even though he had about a dozen Ferraris and Lamborghinis, he perfected to drive an Acura sedan as his everyday car. Not even a particularly nice one. Even though there are better options within their budget, a lot of rich people still prefer the ‘average’ things we use.

3. When companies like Lamborghini and Koenesgegg make limited edition supercars worth, like, $6 million each. Those cars are usually paid for before they are done being built. Somewhere out there are few garages where there are dozens of these insane super cars are just sitting. Unused. I can’t imagine being so rich that $6 million for a decoration seems trivial. They use the Dupont registry. No point in even looking in it unless you got money. Rich people love registries. The Dupont registry is for cars, but there are registries for diamonds, yachts, artwork, even couture fashion. The registry serves as a record of who has owned an item and it gives rich people a way of putting their name “in the record books.” Rich people love playing the name game and comparing rolodexes. Let’s take some priceless diamond for example, certainly it is in a registry somewhere and it is owned by some muckety muck, if that guy decides to sell it the new owner (let’s call him Thurston Howell) will be listed in the registry, now Thurston may not even take possession of the gem. What would they do? Display it on the coffee table… no, it stays locked away in a swiss vault. The value of the gem is not in displaying it, but in having your name attached to it. Diamonds are forever right? Forever and ever now, when that diamond is mentioned (especially when being sold) Mr. Thurston Howell’s name is going to be brought into the conversation as a prior owner. Even after Thurston is dead and gone, he has bought himself a little slice of immortality.

2. My sister nannied for an extremely wealthy woman who has a net worth of $2 billion. The stories of her are insane. Like she was literally crazy. My sister was not allowed to punish or scold the kids in any way. My sister got in trouble for telling the little girl not to run with a lollipop in her mouth, and one time she “traumatized” the little boy for trying to get him to eat his peas at dinner. Her husband had passed away and she began having a special relationship with another woman. They were at a hotel. In the living room area the little girl started coughing; she burst into the room topless with the other woman and insisted they call an ambulance, which they did. Of course it was just a common cold. She used to wear her Harvard stuff all the time. Like wanted to make it well known. She had zero common sense, and I don’t think she could have been accepted on her own merit. When she was having a “stressful” day she had to go to the spa, which was several times a week. She told her kids things like “people who drive trucks are workers and are uneducated.”

3. They can buy kidnapping insurance. To add to that, there are services out there that does security specifically for kids of a certain gender. A woman that worked for me years ago used to specialize in bodyguard services for girls between 10 and 18. It was a constant companion thing. She made sure the kid got back and forth to school. She was with the kid anytime she would have to leave the house. Before that she worked for older girls/women of the rich. They would go on vacation together, into nightclubs and she was always on duty.

4. Rich Russian business men rent taxis that are luxurious on the inside, but look like ambulances on the outside to avoid traffic.

5. Obscure brands of regular items. I have a few well off friends and trust fund babies and all of them NEED obscure brands of regular items. They want potato chips. It can’t be Lays it has to be a imported thin cut potato from France that was harvested by the bay on a cool afternoon by a happy French man.

6. My sister used to work at a very expensive hotel in London. She told me that new clients would check in and then once they left the room the staff would go in and inventory everything they brought with them and where they put it and how with the help of staff they set the room up. They do this so the next time the client schedules a room, the staff can run out and buy everything on the list so the client doesn’t have to have any luggage and everything is set up how they like it. They have thousands of clients and she showed me pictures of room layouts and lists of clothing, watches, and other things that are ALWAYS set up the same for the same client. Crazy stuff.

7. I heard a story once about a young Russian man who inherited $20 billion and decided to eventually get married. For his bachelor party, he invited all his boys to Russia, escorted them in a black car right from the runway and they were driven 4 hours deep into the Russian forest. They stopped at a random hotel for the night, and then in the morning, they were dropped off in the middle of the forest. All of a sudden, a bunch of Russian men riding horses and dressed in traditional Russian battle armor surround the guys. They tell the guys that, in honor of their boy’s marriage, they are going to get suited up, ride horses, and rape and pillage a nearby village. I kid you not, their billionaire friend purchased a random, small Russian village deep in the forest, rented 54 of the best prostitutes in Russia (18 guys x 3 girls each) to act as the “villagers”, rigged the entire place to be suitable for raping and pillaging, and finally, placed 18 huge cubes of frozen ice inside each of the houses in the village. These giant ice cubes contained precious jewels, Rolex watches, money, and other valuables. The 18 guys were all given a time limit, and the girls were incentivized with money to distract the guys as much as possible in their quest to break down the solid ice blocks. I will let your imagination run wild.

8. From what I’ve seen in Switzerland, most very rich people don’t actually appear to be rich. They live in big houses, but it’s all very private and they don’t show off their wealth like other less rich people that try to show off everything they own and don’t own. The houses are usually in remote places and with walls or bushes to stop you from seeing what’s inside, the typical nouveau rich will just show off their “mansion” at every opportunity. A very rich guy is not the one that is driving a Ferrari and slowing down to revving his engine near women. A very rich guy, is the one that you don’t actually see, you merely “feel” the wealth when the occasional Bentley or Rolls Royce passes by without making heads turn. Some anecdotal story that happened with me: I was at an ATM machine in Switzerland, behind an old lady that looked to be quite poor. When it was my turn to use the machine, I noticed that she didn’t remove her card and I could still check how much money she had in her bank account and even withdraw money. She had around 8 million Swiss Francs! And yes, I called her and told her that she forgot to remove her card.

9. There’s insurance on fine art. And I don’t mean, “Sorry you lost it in the hurricane, here’s your paycheck” insurance. I mean, “The area is flooded and riots are breaking out. We’re going to send a SWAT-like team to helicopter in and fly your assets out of the area and into a safer place” kind of insurance.

10. I live in NYC and work as a courier. I regularly deliver things like $50 cookies (4 of them) across town for a $15 dollar delivery charge. $65 for 4 cookies. Then I must go through the service entrance under the building as I am not allowed in the “regular” halls. Upon arriving I hand the cookies to the servant who answers the door that is in an elevator that opens onto the kitchen usually. I have delivered a $35 bagel. The new thing is cold pressed juices. Daily I will drop an $80 order for 4 juices plus delivery cost. So pushing a $100 for some juice to the apartments overlooking Central Park. it’s crazy. I saw a 12 year old kid in a private school uniform wearing a brand new apple watch and eating with friends at a cafe that had to be $30 a head for a coffee and a snack. Then left and walked into a brownstone ($5-$10 Million) in Manhattan? That kid will go to a schools that I will never see, make friends and connections that are impossible otherwise. The 1% live a different life. Different rules, different opportunities. I think it’s great for them my only concern is the resources that are required to maintain that life are staggering. The carbon footprint, the man hours of people serving them is mind boggling.

11. I live in Sydney, Australia and recently there was a big controversy about how students of two of our most expensive private schools were being secretly guaranteed spots at University of Sydney (one of the major 3 universities in Sydney) before they had even done their year 12 finals. Everyone else in the state stresses out over year 12 to get good grades and get a good ATAR (equivalent of GPA) and these kids didn’t have to lift a finger just because their parents were rich. So there’s that.

12. My dad’s rich but he doesn’t spend much and we’ve lived a middle class life even though we could be living a much lavish life. No complaints at all though. But because of my dad’s wealth I am friends with wealthy people and I have friends who live pretty wild. If I go to a club with one of my friends the bouncer will know my friend and just let us in, even when half of us are underage and we have no girls with us. I also dated a girl whose dad was the CEO of a very large federal funded nonprofit. I’m not allowed to mention names of politicians but I’ll tell you that House of Cards has a lot of truth to it. There’s also the friends I had who were fu**ing idiots but still got into top notch universities and then there were the other not so friendly kids at my private high school whose fathers would give so much money to our high school that these kids could get away with pretty much anything. Racism, cheating and skipping class. And me witnessing all this was weird because the way my dad raised my family with a “save first” mentality, I never really asked for things that much. But yeah. Rich white people are crazy!

13. Expensive versions of everyday things. Like the Mason Pearson hair brush or the Acqua di Parma razor. Wines that cost between $1,000 and $5,000 a bottle just to share over dinner to impress friends. Perfumes and colognes that cost several hundred just for a tiny bottle. It’s crazy. It’s the same for kid’s stuff too. $300 baby dresses they’re going to grow out of in a month or only wear once, gold plated knobs for their dressers. All sorts of ridiculous things the kid doesn’t need. But they can afford it, so they buy it.

14. In the days when Concorde was flying across the Atlantic, any private jet owner with a Concorde ticket got priority landing at Heathrow. So wealthy private jet owners would book a seat on Concorde as they approached Heathrow, which they were not going to use, just to get the priority landing.

15. So I’m a freelance photographer, and I was working a job for a Fortune 500 company. We are based in Atlanta, but the shoot was in New York State. Usually we would make travel arrangements and bill the client for the flight later – but this time around one of the C-level execs had space in his private jet and was going to the same location, and flying back the same day so we were invited to catch a ride. It was the most smooth travel experience I’ve ever had. We did zero waiting. Drove right on to the tarmac (there was a valet wtf?) handed our gear to one of the pilots who loaded it in tothe plane (the pilot!!) and were in the air in under 15 minutes. It was amazing – but the most eye opening thing for me is that this executive we were traveling with made the flight from Atlanta and had brought an empty cooler with him. It struck me as a bit odd of course. Until we were leaving our location for the day and met back up with him. On our way back to the airport he had us stop at an out of the way deli so he could buy 15 pounds of meatball mix. This man made an excuse for a meeting he could have done over the phone and then literally flew 900 miles basically to pick up dinner from his favorite deli…because he could.

16. Time. You can really buy time. I used to work assisting a chef who did a lot of specialty (vegan or gluten free or macro or w/e) private dinners for rich people. Not big parties, just small dinner parties. I got to go to some ridiculously fancy penthouse apartments and I wound up being friends with the son of a very famous musician for a while. Think about all the little things that you do in a day: getting ready in the morning, grocery shopping, cooking, cleaning, making phone calls, paying bills, going to the bank, etc. Now imagine you don’t have to do any of them. They’re all done for you, and you don’t have to even think about them if you don’t want to. Your time spent traveling is also at a minimum because you take helicopters or private planes everywhere. You have so much more free time, leisure time, and you don’t have to ever deal with one of life’s little inconveniences again. Even the guy I was friends with (who was in college and trying to live a pretty normal life) had meals and groceries delivered, used a car service all the time, had his laundry picked up and done, etc. So he had all this time that normal college kids don’t have, to do his work or play music or whatever he felt like. Everyone can sort of imagine the luxury items (art, cars, jewelry etc) but the part that is hard for regular people to understand is that, unless you want to, you don’t have to be involved in picking out what painting you want or looking at your budget or making the deal or anything. You just say, “I think we should have a painting on this wall” and then you get one. It’s pretty sweet, honestly. All the homes I was in had really great collections of one kind or another because the rich person could basically have a staff member whose entire job was to find, restore, and display Soviet toy cars or something.

17. I am employed by people who are too busy to go through the actions of shopping, but occasionally know what they want. I get e-mails that say things like: “Hey Justin, I need a new grill like last year’s.” So I order it, arrange setup, disposal of the old one, throw in a bunch of accessories and mark it up 15%. Some orders require research. “We broke a place setting of her grandmother’s china. Here’s a quick texted picture of what the plates look like. Get a replacement.” In that case it’s $100 an hour plus 15% markup. They don’t know or care. I could mark it up 100% and they’d still pay. The way I look at it, life is the same length for everyone. They only have 24 hours in their day and they want to get things done as efficiently as possible, so paying me is well worth the extra expense.

18. A mate of mine works on a super yacht (£350 million) for some playboy billionaire and part of his job is to get rid of the passed out hookers every morning and take them back to shore. Then line up the next flock. Like a “Hooker Liaison Manager” of sorts. Side note, he took him out on a fishing trip and the guy insisted on using use lobster and beluga caviar as bait.

19. As a doctor, we do house calls for very wealthy patrons of the hospital. We can set up a whole hospital suite in the comfort of your personal mansion, with private nurses and staff. It gives you optimal care, prevents HAIs, and gives you much more dignity when dying. Plus the food is 10 times better when your private chef is making it.

20. Hiring disabled people so that you can cut lines at Disney World.

21. There is a special chip in Centurion cards that alerts high end retailers when you enter their store. It lets their concierge know your buying history to give them an idea of what you like. They greet you on the floor and bring out a rack of things they think you will like.

22. I work with celebrities for a living and they have a lot of cool things. Most of them have a system called Crestron in their homes where they control everything from music to temperature to the alarm system from an iPad-type device. They all have “house managers,” which is apparently the new P.C. term for butler. Oh– and this is a big one. “Night nannies,” or night nurses. In addition to having a daytime nanny, when celebrities have a baby, they almost always hire a woman to come in the evenings and spend the night taking care of the infant. If the celebrity mom is breastfeeding, the night nanny will come wake up the celeb at regular intervals, then when the feeding is over, take the baby and soothe it back to sleep. It makes the whole newborn experience way easier than it is for us normals. There are a handful of night nannies that everyone uses, and they make serious bank.

23. There is an iPhone app only available to millionaires. It’s called VIP Black. You can download it for $999, but you cannot use it until you prove to them you have at least a million dollars in assets.

24. A family office. It is essentially an all-purpose financial hub just for you that includes the services of accountants, investment managers, tax lawyers, personal lawyers, insurance professionals, financial planners, and concierge staff that cater to all your financial needs. They can vary from a staff of 4-6 people to in the hundreds depending on the size of your wealth and family and complexity of needs. They’re the ones who manage your portfolio, deal with banks, IRS, etc. so that you can spend more time living it up. Usually one or two people from the office liaise with you directly and take down your needs. They maintain a small cash reserve of $50,000 – $500,000 that you use for everyday expenses. If you want to make a larger purchase (supercar, yacht, jet, house, etc.) they’ll work with you to free up the liquidity you need from your investments and advise you on making the purchases. Sometimes they even shop for you and price haggle for you. They’re usually paid off some percentage of your family assets (so it’s in their interest to grow these assets), and domiciled in Switzerland or Caymans, etc.

25. The biggest service I’ve seen rich people use and how they keep their wealth is through school. I used to be completely oblivious to how private schools worked until recently. I’ve learned a lot from going to a top university and joining a fraternity, where I’ve surrounded myself with many people in the top 5% of wealth, despite me being lower middle class. The richest people isolate themselves in top universities and organizations, where they can have big money orgies, and make connections with other rich people, to keep the family money flowing. This happens all the way through private elementary schools up through college. What people get the best jobs in America? Those who go to Ivy League schools. Who goes to Ivy League schools? People with connections and money. There’s a book called The Price of Admission that exposes how messed up this system is. It says only about 40% of open spots at top private schools are really open to the average person. The other 60% is filled by the children of celebrities, politicians, CEO’s, and wealthy alumni. These people get in top universities because they donate massive amounts of money alongside their application. It also helps that these people were able to be sent to the top boarding/prep high schools in the nation, which highly helps their admittance to top universities. So the fraud here is that our top high school boarding/prep schools and universities are filled, not with people who are super smart and are hard workers, but people that have connections and money. They then graduate from these top schools and get the top jobs in America, and the motion stays perpetual and passed down to their kids.