Subject + adjective + Verb

Question

According to what I have been learning from my teachers of English, the structure should be like this:

Subject + who/which/ that + be + adj + Main Verb.

E.g: People who are extremely rich will buy these cars.

However, I often see sentences like this:

The minority of us lucky enough to have been born in the developed world take for granted universal education, an assured food supply and clean, piped water.

I know it’s grammatically correct not to use relative clauses in these cases, as I have seen people using this structure in both writing and speaking. The thing is, there’s no rule saying that I can use an adjective right after a noun without using a relative clause. Therefore, I’m not sure when I can and cannot use this structure. And I feel it’s weird if I say:

People extremely rich will buy these cars.

And I wonder if I use a relative clause in the second example:

The minority of us who are lucky enough to have born in the developed world take for granted universal education, an assured food supply and clean, piped water.

Will there be any change in meaning? I don’t know whether it is a minority of us who are lucky to have born in the developed world or it is that we are lucky to have born there but a minority of us take for granted such good things.

Answer 1

The minority of us, lucky enough, to have been born... vs The minority of us who are lucky enough to have born...

there is no ambiguity in, the original but there is in the newer version.

lucky enough is just a modifier and it must relate to "those that have been born". Trying to relate it to "the minority of us" does not work with this sentence structure. What are we lucky about? there is only one thing we can be lucky about and that is "The minority of us that have been born in the developed world" have been lucky.

However once modified The the minority of us who are lucky also becomes an option.

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People who are extremely rich will buy these cars.

Adjectives most often come before the noun they describe, but they can be placed after the noun however I would suggest in the following case they cannot.

People extremely rich will buy these cars.

however you could write this

The extremely rich will buy these cars.

Ref Adjectives most often come before the noun they describe, but they can be placed after the noun

Ref https://ell.stackexchange.com/questions

Answer 2

The minority of us lucky enough to have been born in the developed world take for granted universal education, an assured food supply and clean, piped water.

This sentence is an example of whiz-deletion, where a wh- word followed a be-verb are omitted from a sentence.

This is permitted when there is a lengthy adjectival phrase, "Lucky enough to be...", but is not permitted with a single adjective: instead, the adjective has to move to its normal position before the noun:

People who are tall often have back trouble
People tall often have back trouble -wrong!
Tall people often have back trouble

I hadn't come noticed this before, but it seems that the same is true when you have and adverb of degree before a single adjective:

People who are extremely rich will buy these cars
People extremely rich will buy these cars -wrong
Extremely rich peoplewill buy these cars

Answer 3

Your example sentence is too long-winded.

Use a shorter example which has the same overall pattern.

A shorter example is sometimes referred to as a minimal example which reproduces the same issues as the original (a MRE - minimal reproducible example).

Suppose we use the following sentences:

The minority of us lucky enough to be wealthy take food for granted. (1A)
The minority of us who are lucky enough to be wealthy take food for granted. (1B)

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A minority of us having red-hair are Olympic athletes (2a)
A minority of us who have red hair are Olympic athletes (2b)

All of the above are ambiguous.

We have the following two interpretations of example (1)

Example 1C

People lucky enough to be wealthy are a minority of all people.
Everyone who is wealthy takes food for granted.

Example 1D

Suppose that "drywests" are those of us who are lucky enough to be wealthy
Less than 50% of drywests take food for granted.

Conclusion

Inserting the phrase "who are" does not change the meaning, or eliminate the ambiguity.