A wealthy Texas teenager, who mowed down and killed four people while three times over the drink-driving limit, was recently spared jail on the grounds that he was so spoilt by his parents he was unable to tell right from wrong. Ethan Couch, 16, stole two cases of beer from a grocery store before speeding at 70mph in a 40mph zone and ploughing into a woman, whose car had broken down, and three Good Samaritans who had stopped to help her. Couch had faced 20 years in youth detention and prison for the crime, but a judge accepted the argument of a defence psychologist that the teenager was suffering from “affluenza”. Instead of jail, he will spend the next ten years in a $450,000-a-year rehab centre – to be paid for by his parents.

Some people are so preoccupied with making money that they have no time to discipline or socialise their children, or even read to them when they are little. Everything in their world is monetized. Tossing around your earnings is the answer to every problem. Thus, parents expect that schools, paid huge fees, will do the job that they, inescapably, should be doing. Epicurus would undoubtedly say that when you sub-contract child-rearing to others you are asking for misery. No amount of money makes up for having a bored, spoiled, undisciplined, out-of-control child. Moral? The most important thing in life, if you are a parent, is the welfare and education of your children. Making money comes second. Common sense? Apparently not so common.