One of my great regrets in life is not having won a lottery in excess of One Trillion Dollars. Take home. After taxes. Had I to do it all over again, I’d set my mind to it, have the right attitude and win that elusive trillion bucks.
Not that I’m stubbornly steadfast in demanding that my trillion-dollar windfall absolutely needs to float gently into my lap via a lucky lotto strike. I wouldn’t mind inheriting the sum, although, I can’t seem to recall any relative, distant or near and dear, present or previous lives, who was worth that level of largesse. I could be gifted the sum via benign aliens from another galaxy or dimension, passing by Earth for a quick hello. I think these UFOites could take a shine to me during our visit.
Maybe I could make them a nice cup of tea and cook up some of my famous chili. They’d be dazzled (I make really good chili) and offer me a gift of equal value. Like the cure for cancer or ultimate weapon or maybe, finally, a diet that works. Maybe they’d gift me a magic wand that makes mean people nice and if you wave it in a figure-8 motion, it also makes earthlings do what you tell them, with an enthusiastic, can-do smile.
A wand like that would need a LOT of batteries.
Of course, if I had such a wand, I wouldn’t need a measly trillion dollars. Everyone could just give me their money when I asked. I’d end up with about $80 trillion. Seriously. According to the CIA, that’s how much money exists in the world.
Is that excessive — having ALL the money? I’d be spending my hours lending a couple of bucks here and there for iced tea or boob jobs.
I know this is off topic. But what — exactly, do boobs do for a living, outside of working for the government?
I hope the aliens wouldn’t leave me my fortune in the form of a personal check. Imagine. They wave goodbye, levitate to their flying saucer and assure: “Don’t worry! It’s good!”
I look at the check and it’s written in some futuristic hieroglyphics and Pig Latin.
One trillion dollars.
That’s 1,000 billion dollars.
How many millions in a trillion? A million. A million millions equals a trillion. Mind boggling, isn’t it?
Hard to believe, there are many people who make about $7.5 million a year. I’m breaking that down to a 40-hour week, no vacation, 52 weeks. Do you realize that to make $7.5 million a year, you’d be paid at a rate of $1 every second? Sixty bucks a minute. And that’s just $3,600 an hour. There are people in this sleepy yuppie concentration camp of Santa Clarita who bring in $7.5 million yearly.
Last year, Business Insider Magazine calculated that Amazon’s Jeff Bezos makes $4,474,885 — an hour. And yet, poor Beez-bozo, can’t bomb anybody.
If I were worth $1 trillion, shouldn’t I be allowed to bomb people? If some politician were to question me, I’d take a stack of $10,000 bills and hit him or her across the nose, gently admonishing, “No no no no no no — NOOO!!” with each swipe, for having the temerity to question me.
Do some math with me.
Let’s say the aliens, being advanced and such, didn’t want me to become spoiled by just handing over $1 trillion. They’d offer me a job.
“Just be — you . . .” they’d say.
What a coincidence. That’s the entirety of my life’s resume.
I’d work a diligent 40-hour week, 52 weeks a year, no vaca, just being me. You know what a $1 trillion yearly salary works out to?
It’s about $19.25 billion — a week.
It’s about $500 million — an hour.
It’s about $8 million — a minute.
It’s about $133,547 every second.
Talk about your time being valuable.
Sigh. Smile.
I just made $667,735.
There’s approximately 7 billion people on the planet (and I wish most would go away). I could afford to give everyone on Earth $142.
I wouldn’t.
But I could afford to.
Cool thing? If New York congressdunce Ms. Occasional Cortex is correct, in 12 years, every living thing’s extinct.
I WOULDN’T HAVE TO PAY NOBODY NOTHIN’.
Friends would ask: “John. Why are you so happy?”
I’d smile and say: “Oh. I don’t know. Life?”
The havoc I could wreak.
Being a trillion richer, I could open 4 million bank accounts, each insured for $250,000 with the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation. Oh yeah. Like I’d do that.
According to the Congressional Research Service, in today’s dollars, World War II cost $4.1 trillion. I’m betting I could take over Canada for a fraction of that. I’d change the country’s name to “Johnada.” I’d execute people caught adding, “donchaknow…” or, “eh?” to the end of their sentences.
Oh, if I but had $1,000,000,000,000.00. I’d get the truck painted. I’d have the time to get to the gym (it’s downstairs now). I’d pay Bill & Hillary to address CalArts’ next graduation.
Nude.
While inhaling helium.
They’d do it, too.
All that money. One trillion dollars.
Sigh.
And I couldn’t even make a dent in the national debt…
John Boston is NOT a trillionaire, but he does possess 119 major writing awards, some for finance reporting.
