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Sunday, May 14, 2017

The Rich and the super rich



When someone such as myself sits down to write about those people who have 99% of all the money in the world you might expect me to be jealous and cynical. I surprise even myself by being neither. It's true that I could make good use of a few million, but we might be surprised at how little I would lavish  on myself.. I've made do without it all these many years, so I'm not likely to absolutely lose my head.

I'm at a loss as to why The Sunday Times bothers to publish the Rich List. Apart from satisfying my idle curiosity it doesn´t  seem to have any other function. The richest family in the world appears to be headed by two brothers from India who have amassed a fortune totalling 16.2 Billion pounds. That was at the cutoff date so God knows what the total stands at now. For a start they made 3.2 Billion Pounds during the past year.

I got to wondering what kind of life that much in assets buys a person, and could you actually enjoy it. It would be a given that you would live in the very finest homes around the world. Everything would be super first-class for you, including an army of people to tend to your needs and wishes. You could do that with 500 million, so what more could you want with two more lots of 500 million each.  You've already got the big airplane and at least one yacht that you could invite as many ladies as you wished to lounge around looking good on, so what the hell would you spend another 10 billion on?

What these two guys did during the last year was get up every day, get dressed in their very finest and go to work to make even more billions. They even look like the kind of people who would not be amused by lots of lovely ladies hanging about, and I even think I might get bored by that as well.

With lots and lots of money a person should be able to have a perfect life in which nothing goes wrong, but judging by the horrid family stories that are generated by the top 99% I really don't think I would want to be one of them.

I play the lottery to a small extent wishing for a win of 15 million euros.. At my age that would mean a couple of new cars and the wife would want a custom designed house, and then it would be time to attend to the reasonable needs of my close family and that of my wife. Our friends would not be forgotten, but we are now down to gifts in the thousands because we have to think of the really needy whose lives must be made better.

Throughout the whole list there was only one name that I  took time over. That was the name of JK Rowling. I am so happy for her because of the manner in which her fortune came, and the fact that she has already given so much of it away for the benefit of so many who were in need.

Her own story reads like a best seller, and the fact that she got children actually reading in this era of all things electronic just captures my imagination.. I assume that all those with money are entitled to it but JK especially deserves every penny and the fame and respect that goes with it. She appears to be happy, and long may she remain that way.

Otherwise, reading through the list that tells me what industries their fortune came through just put me to sleep.That's because my name wasn't there, so as I said, what was the point?

Maybe next year?


Copyright (c) 2017
Eugene Carmichael

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