Mega Lotto

I didn't win the Mega Millions jackpot the other day.
   Big surprise, I know, but congratulations to those who did, that's a lot of money. Which got me to thinking, how much is enough? Certainly when someone wins $300 million, they're probably not going to have to work again. Ever. Unless they turn into one of those lottery winners for whom the money becomes abstract and meaningless, so they spend it like it's never going to run out. Which it does, of course, leaving them millions of dollars in debt instead of mere hundreds.
   But assume you won the lottery, and further assume you were astute enough, or had astute enough friends, family and advisors around you, that you don't become a cautionary tale and you actually invest your money wisely and spend thriftily enough that you'll die before you run out of funds.
   How much do you need?
   And I don't mean just cash, I mean stuff. You'd splurge at first, of course, fur-lined sinks, electric dog polishers, that kind of thing, but once you have a house full of junk you'll never use again, then what? Once you've eaten at every restaurant in town once a week for a year, then what?
   Wouldn't it be better to use your money to go places, to see things, to do things - or have them done to you - and to have experiences that only that kind of money can bring? The thing that separates me from Bill Gates is not his multi-billions of dollars, it's what that kind of cash can do. He's got waaaaay more options than I do, nothing but the freedom to go crazy. Which is why he's out there right now trying to guilt other billionaires into giving away most of their money to charity. Bill Gates realized that he'd much rather be remembered as Andrew Carnegie* than J.P. Morgan**.
   I think it's good to be comfortable, meaning you have enough to live on, to provide a few amenities or possibly luxuries, provide for your family appropriately, that sort of thing. But too much money becomes a prison, a situation in which you spend most of your time and energy trying to maintain your wealth rather than enjoying what that wealth can provide. And if you're not extremely careful, your kids turn into privileged little bastards.
   Lots of money, from the lottery or from deceptive, borderline-fraudulent business practices, should be funneled into arts and sciences. DaVinci was a genius without parallel, but he still had to go to the Italian nobility with his hat in his hand, asking for florins to keep doing what he loved. It seems to me that sort of noblesse oblige is lacking today; there are a lot of people expending a lot of effort to make a lot of money for no other reason than to have it before the next guy. Doesn't seem right to me.
   I'll keep playing the lottery, but I'll need to think about what I'd do when I finally win it. Be careful what you wish for and all that.
   First things first, though. I'd install those fur-lined sinks.



* now known for his Carnegie endowment and libraries instead of his social Darwinism and cutthroat business practices
** now known largely for being the focus of the fierce anti-trust legislation of the early 20th Century