Buck Passing

By John Elson

THE ULTRA RICH by Vance Packard

Little, Brown; 358 pages; $22.95

Nothing is certain, goes the old saw, but death and taxes. Death, yes. But probably not taxes -- if, that is, one is wealthy enough to hire lawyers and accountants with a working knowledge of loopholes in the Internal Revenue code. Maybe the rich can't take it with them, like other mortals, but they don't have to leave very much of it to Uncle Sam either.

That is the egalitarian theme of Vance Packard's latest venture in pop sociology, which is centered on slapdash but often tantalizing interviews with 30 of the nation's richest citizens (average net worth in 1987: $425 million). As the author presents them, these ultrarich tend to be banal in thought and sometimes defiantly plain Jane in tastes. "What's better than meat-loaf?" asks Texas developer Walter W. Caruth Jr., whose wife (despite his $600 million) does all the cooking. Surprisingly few of Packard's subjects try to live up to their imposing annual incomes. Leonard Shoen, the founder of U- Haul, says he could comfortably retire on $50,000 a year.

Megamillionaires with a willed fortune are often ambivalent about it. Inheriting Dow Jones stock now worth $150 million, recalls Christopher Bancroft, was like winning an elephant in a raffle: "I didn't know what the hell to do with it." Laura, a fourth-generation Rockefeller whose maiden name is hidden behind two marriages, remembers her family's vast compound as a "verdant cage." A psychiatric social worker, she happily gives away her inherited income to favorite causes like the Children's Defense Fund.

For self-made entrepreneurs, on the other hand, the zealous pursuit of money is its own reward, as a proof of self-worth. Even so, Packard notes, they often worry about how inheritances will affect their offspring. Since his $ children and grandchildren are (or soon will be) millionaires, Ewing Kauffman (owner of baseball's Kansas City Royals) has no plans to will them any of his $340 million. Giving more, he says, "just spoils them."

Packard believes, not unreasonably, that the excessive concentration of wealth among a cadre of megamillionaires is worse than immoral; it is dangerous to the good health of capitalism. His proposed cures are fairly familiar -- and unlikely to be enacted: for example, taxing net worth above a certain level (say, $25 million) and reforming the rules on trusts that allow billions to escape fair taxation.

Whatever good sense these palliatives make, they would certainly cramp the style of some ultrarich whose money lust is tempered by an engagingly eccentric sense of how to spend their fortunes. Arthur Jones, the gruff, gun- toting inventor of Nautilus sports equipment, is laird of a Florida estate that includes a runway large enough to land his own Boeing 707; it is used, among other things, to fly in wild animals for medical research. One of them, which Jones proudly shows Packard, is a reptilian rarity: the biggest saltwater crocodile in captivity. Nice pet for a man who is a rather awesome rarity himself.