You know, I don't think I'd make a very good billionaire. I'd want to give all my money away.
The Powerball saga that just wrapped up (with a jackpot of 1.8 billion dollars) prompted my semi-joking TV piece last night, about what I would do if I happened to hit the lottery. But one thing in the bit was serious—if I had a billion (or two) dollars, I wouldn't want to keep it.
I'd want to use it to help out as many people as possible.
And right there, that would make me a bad billionaire. Back in the old days, people like Andrew Carnegie gave away their wealth for the betterment of others. These days, billionaires want even more billions, and once they get more billions they do things like build rockets or overthrow governments because they don't want to pay taxes on their billions.
I mean, heaven forbid THAT happen.
So if I were to actually buy a Powerball ticket and if I were to actually win a billion or two, I probably wouldn't be allowed into the Billionaire Boys Club. But you know what? I'm actually okay with that. I'd keep a couple of million to live on (because I'm pretty sure pretty much everyone could live on a couple of million bucks) and then I'd use the rest to help out others who aren't billionaires.
Call it a character flaw if you must, but that's what I'd do if I had a billion (or more) dollars.
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I don't know that I'd spend those billions on what I talked about last night, but maybe a few of the ideas might be a start.
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