Willow Tufano, a 14 year old Florida girl has gotten into real estate investing with the purchase of a foreclosed house for $12,000. The girl’s mother, a real estate agent, has been selling a lot of foreclosures recently and her daughter would sometimes accompany her on property visits. Willow noticed that many of the homes would contain the abandoned possessions of the previous owner, so she did what any precocious 14 year old would do. She sold all that stuff on Craigslist, and use the earnings to purchase a foreclosure from her mother, who provided 50% of the capital. She plans to rent out the house, and use the income to slowly buy out her mother’s share and become the sole owner by the time she turns 18.
If the comments section below the article is any guide, you either think this girl is an entrepreneurial hero of American capitalism, or you think she is a disgusting thief profiting on the misery of others. In either case, I want to use this story to highlight a point that I think can’t be made enough (and one that I’ve made twice on this blog before, here and here). The oft-repeated argument that success is the result of hard work and responsibility (and the idea that follows, that the unemployed are just lazy and irresponsible) is simply not enough. Hard work and responsibility are incredibly important of course, but they aren’t everything. This view completely ignores externalities that are beyond control. Willow’s work clearly paid off, but it would not have been possible had she not been lucky enough to have a mother with multiple houses full of abandoned stuff she could sell. She wouldn’t have a continuing income stream now if her mother had not provided her with 50% of the cost to buy the foreclosure.
No one’s success, regardless of how impressive or unlikely, is solely the result of that person’s actions or ideas. Everyone, everyone benefits from things entirely beyond their control. That’s not to belittle anyone’s accomplishments of course, just something to keep in mind when you hear folks claiming that wealth and success are the sole product of hard work, and all you need to achieve them is to be less lazy.
520 Chestnut 
One can’t fault the child as she herself in the position of
her own development / in having a mum whom makes an
living from the misfortune of others it understandable the
child per’aps of the same genetic nature as mother / YET
wrong done presently not being a burden placed on child.
Many simply ignore the suffering the misfortune of others
seeking only a gain in profit from the misfortune of others.
However present case such child not of a age where her
true nature having developed thus her faults / put aside
till of a age where she can via her own experience of life
able decide from a act which right as an act which wrong.
It may she turns out as heartles as the mother or through
practical experience of life with open heart as an sense of
right over wrong / she’ll bring but joy as hope unto others.