BS: If you were a Billionaire

Subject: BS: If you were a Billionaire
From: olddude
Date: 25 Jun 10 - 08:24 AM

I thought about this, we all live x number of years ... then it is the dirt nap for all of us ... but what if you had a billion dollars while living. what would you do.

I figured, I would have put myself on a 100k salary a year.. then go on a mission:

1) free health clinics all over the place
2) homeless shelters all over the place
3) No food pantry would ever need to worry about funds again

That would be my top three ... what is yours? There is other stuff like fund research but for me the immediate needs of people would have to be the first.

Subject: RE: BS: If you were a Billionaire
From: John MacKenzie
Date: 25 Jun 10 - 08:39 AM

I'd fund birth control clinics, and set up a trust to financially reward those who contract to have only 2 children.
Sure as hell, over population is what's killing this world.

Subject: RE: BS: If you were a Billionaire
From: SINSULL
Date: 25 Jun 10 - 08:46 AM

I neither need nor want much - a new storm door, fresh paint. LOL Too much money can take over your life.

A friend of mine had a brother in California who won over $1M. About a month later he was mugged and killed by some local toughs who thought he would have money on him. He was better off poor. Be careful what you wish for.

Subject: RE: BS: If you were a Billionaire
From: SINSULL
Date: 25 Jun 10 - 08:50 AM

But if it happened, I think most of the money would go towards offering first rate education opportunities to low income families. A child's future opportunities are pretty well mapped out by the time he hits third grade. Even the playing field with first rate primary schools and we can change lives.

Subject: RE: BS: If you were a Billionaire
From: mauvepink
Date: 25 Jun 10 - 09:07 AM

I would have great pleasure going around the place awarding donations to who, what and where I wanted to help. I would fund a centre for females escaping violence (but also give money to charity offering the same for men). I would try and buy copyrights of various things, the proceeds of which could then go on and fund more projects (much like the Riccordi Brothers still fund Verdi's charities from the proceeds of his music). Maybe a home for retired folk singers?

With that kind of money the fun and selfish pleasure one could have redistributing it to those more in need would be immnse. It goes without say I would make sure my family were sorted for life too and anyone that ever did anything for me in my life would get it back 100 fold.

What a great life it would be finding new ways to spend the interest and spread some happiness.

mp

PS... yes, I know money does not cause happiness but it can relieve a whole load of pain for many

Subject: RE: BS: If you were a Billionaire
From: artbrooks
Date: 25 Jun 10 - 09:16 AM

So, who was that guy who went around knocking on doors and giving away $1 million a pop? I think I'd do something similar...after funding the education of various grandkids, nieces, nephews, etc. I'd also like to go back to the place where I got my last history degree and endow a chair.

Subject: RE: BS: If you were a Billionaire
From: Arthur_itus
Date: 25 Jun 10 - 09:38 AM

I would buy a beautiful house along one of the nice canals in the centre of Amsterdam. I wouldn't buy a car as that isn't necessary with the excellent public transport system. If I needed a car, I would hire one.
I would see all my direct family OK
Half of the money would go to my daughters so that they never had to worry about where the next meal was coming from.
I would just enjoy life.

Subject: RE: BS: If you were a Billionaire
From: Becca72
Date: 25 Jun 10 - 09:50 AM

After setting up my family and friends for life, I'd take over funding the local Refuge League.

Subject: RE: BS: If you were a Billionaire
From: gnu
Date: 25 Jun 10 - 10:19 AM

SINS... "offering first rate education opportunities to low income families".

Certainly one of my top choices.

Subject: RE: BS: If you were a Billionaire
From: GUEST,punkfolkrocker
Date: 25 Jun 10 - 10:24 AM

my immediate selfish needs [and all to be shared with good friends]:

a secluded lakeside hut deep in a remote forest in central/east europe
with independent electricity generation
and no neighbours for miles.

a winnibego converted into a mobile studio
with a full-time employed trustworthy drug-free driver/sound engineer/assistant.

an old victorian ex-municiple building, threatened by neglect
and greedy philistine property speculators,
to be converted into my main permanent UK home
and studio, rehearsal stage, swimming pool and gym
[maintenance staff as required].

a luthier and amp workshop
staffed by a small well paid team of expert technicians
to turn my sketchbook ideas into best quality reality.

a reasonable sized seaworthy motor/sail boat suitable for international travel
and well equipped with recording facilities
for mid ocean open air semi-acoustic performances.

a premium quality Somerset orchard and cider press,
providing steady well rewarded work for a local community.

an annual 'off the corporate media radar' un-publicised free entry
local small-scale festival with international headline acts of my choice.

All employees, permanent & temporary, to be paid considerably well above national minimum wage,
with full benefits and union membership as appropriate.

Thats enough to start with, then see how what's left of the billion,
invested in ethical saving schemes, pans out over the next 10 to 20 years...

Finally, any £££$$$ left over to be bequeathed to whatever Humanist social development / music and arts organization
most impresses me with their commitment, integrity and ideas..


.. so I guess it all adds up to a sort of rural steam punk equivalent
of Prince's private money burning Paisley Park creative utopia folly
of the 80's & 90's....

Subject: RE: BS: If you were a Billionaire
From: bubblyrat
Date: 25 Jun 10 - 10:24 AM

In the first place ,I'd like to be in Great Britain , as a billion here is much ,much bigger than a US billion ( it is a million times a million,as opposed to a thousand times a million ), so I'd be much richer ! Then I'd hire a team of expert financial advisors to assist me in deciding how much to give away,and to whom,as there would be much to consider.
       Then,having got it down to a more realistic & less worrying amount, I'd buy a house by the river Thames,with a mooring for my boat, and a smaller place,also with boat & mooring, in Amsterdam, so I could go to the Maritime Museum every day & help the guys who work on the old steam-tug there, and they'd take me to Dordrecht with them. And I have always hankered after a barn-conversion or something similar, preferably near the airfield,on the island of Texel !!
                  And I'd but a new guitar for anyone who wanted one, of course !

Subject: RE: BS: If you were a Billionaire
From: Bonzo3legs
Date: 25 Jun 10 - 10:52 AM

I'd set up a college for serial do-gooders!!!

Subject: RE: BS: If you were a Billionaire
From: Crow Sister (off with the fairies)
Date: 25 Jun 10 - 10:55 AM

I'd set up 'The People's Trust' dedicated to the maintenance of real sites of cultural interest as opposed to the preservation of aristocrats country pads like what we get with that other organisation ;-)

Here's one by way of example - supposed to be the second largest graveyard in London, in active use from the middle ages until 1853 (closed due to it being "completely overchared with dead") and supposed to be 'home' to something like fourty thousand bodies.

Fun quiz: how can you tell that the thousands of people buried here were prostitutes and paupers instead of nobs?

http://spitalfieldslife.files.wordpress.com/2009/12/img_8065.jpg



In truth I've no idea what I'd do with a billion..

Subject: RE: BS: If you were a Billionaire
From: olddude
Date: 25 Jun 10 - 11:06 AM

One selfish thing I would do, is fund a PBS weekly show where my Catter friends could perform some real music for people ... and talk about folk history, and music and such ... that would be fun along with the massive charity work.

Subject: RE: BS: If you were a Billionaire
From: MMario
Date: 25 Jun 10 - 11:08 AM

Only a billion?

Subject: RE: BS: If you were a Billionaire
From: Georgiansilver
Date: 25 Jun 10 - 11:11 AM

1)Transport water to third world countries... spend money in those countries on digging wells.
2)Seeds and crops to those countries where they can now grow food as they have water.
3)Look at housing those who are living in totally inadequate shacks in the same countries.

PS I am quite happy living where I am and being the person I am... don't need to change that other than to become a catalyst for helping those less fortunate. I'm not one of those who needs a bigger house/better car/ better food/ better quality of life/status/personal wealth.

Subject: RE: BS: If you were a Billionaire
From: olddude
Date: 25 Jun 10 - 11:17 AM

A few years ago, a big Bank in Buffalo bought 4000 football tickets around Thanksgiving so that the local football team would be a sell out and the game was then televised. The next segment on the news was how the food pantry wasn't sure they could do the free thanksgiving dinners for the homeless because they were 2000 dollars short of the cost for the food ... How nuts is that!! ... huh ... The football tickets are 48 bucks a piece and the bank buys 4000 of them so a stupid game can be televised and people treated them as heroes. Yet they had to put on the news that the homeless probably won't eat because the pantry was 2000 dollars short of funds for food.

Subject: RE: BS: If you were a Billionaire
From: Rapparee
Date: 25 Jun 10 - 11:30 AM

I'd keep it very quiet and try to do good with the money. Endow public libraries and a chair or two and some scholarships at a University. Help the family with no-interest loans, but no giveaways (my family wouldn't take those). Probably replace my 11 year old Honda Civic with something newer and have some work done on the house. Put some aside for my older age. Give some to organizations with a PROVEN CURRENT track record of helping veterans and the needy poor. Pay taxes.

Subject: RE: BS: If you were a Billionaire
From: Bill D
Date: 25 Jun 10 - 11:38 AM

After arranging MY comforts (nice house, car....and planning for the travel I never did)... I would spend months agonizing over which charities deserved the 950 million remaining money. Maybe I'd give it to all those above with good ideas.

Maybe the best answer I ever heard was from a good friend many years ago, when it was a 'million' instead of a billion.

Conversation went like this.

"Hey Tony, what would you do if you won a million dollars?"

"Oh, gee...I'd get a nice house....and I've always wanted a Mercedes. Then I'd endow a new chair in in my school's English department and provide some scholarships for needy kids.......Oh, yes- and buy my wife, Karen, a new pair of jeans!"

"Umm...Tony....I don't get that last one. Why a pair of jeans for Karen?"

"Well, because she needs 'em!"

Subject: RE: BS: If you were a Billionaire
From: MMario
Date: 25 Jun 10 - 11:41 AM

just an fyi - a quicky googling of budgets for free medical clinics show annual budgets ranging from 75,000 to $22 million. This is not including the cost of obtaining space.

Since you would want to endow the clinics (no sense setting them up if you don't provide them with some means of continueing, right?)

so, lets say you find an means of providing them with a fund that yields 8 % - 5% to meet the operating budget and 3 % to meet inflation costs.

$75,000 annual budget would need an endowed fund of...about 15 million. Of course lately , you would be lucky to count on something yielding much more then 2 % - so go four times larger in your endowment.

The one, $75,000 annnual budget would thus take 60 million.

A billion dollars isn't going to go as far as some people think.

THe thing to do would be tie the billion up in some sort of income yielding irrevocable fund, and then use ONLY the income to do your charitable works; in theory leaving the lump sum still intact.

If you got 2% from your billion, you could set up one clinic every three years or so....

Subject: RE: BS: If you were a Billionaire
From: mauvepink
Date: 25 Jun 10 - 11:48 AM

It's not about being a 'do-gooder'. What could I possible want with a billion dollars or pounds that just made more money and benefited no-one?

My plans for it are quite selfish. By doing so much good with the money I would be extending my own life. Such contentment as it would bring could only be good for my spirits and whatever life I have left could only be improved.

Knowing my family and friends were comfortably off and that many people were now getting help/assistance they never had to help them have an improved life could only increase my own contentment.

I get to feel it now without millions in the bank. Taking my daughter and granddaughter out for the day, or 'treating them' to something they would not have, or just simply chatting with them on the phone to know that all is well. These are not 'do-gooding' things. These are things that enrich my own life and are, therefore, quite selfish in their motivations.

Just my own angle on it. I am sure others have theirs

mp

Subject: RE: BS: If you were a Billionaire
From: theleveller
Date: 25 Jun 10 - 11:51 AM

I'd have a new pair of socks every day - to stop the hassle of having to try to match up odd ones.

Subject: RE: BS: If you were a Billionaire
From: mauvepink
Date: 25 Jun 10 - 12:06 PM

Would they all be the same colour? ;-)

That could save lots of time and trouble lol

mp

Subject: RE: BS: If you were a Billionaire
From: olddude
Date: 25 Jun 10 - 12:08 PM

MMario
I would hire you to make my billion stretch as far as it can go ...
good job.. I can live with setting up one every three years ...

Subject: RE: BS: If you were a Billionaire
From: fat B****rd
Date: 25 Jun 10 - 12:40 PM

As for the begging letters............I'd keep sending 'em.

Subject: RE: BS: If you were a Billionaire
From: Rapparee
Date: 25 Jun 10 - 12:42 PM

Oh, yeah: get a really, really good and honest tax lawyer, if I can find one.

Subject: RE: BS: If you were a Billionaire
From: Ebbie
Date: 25 Jun 10 - 12:43 PM

Good grief. You're all talking as though the billion was a lump sum sitting in your closet. Do you realize how much money that is? How much you'd have per day, per week, per month, per year? Invested, that billion would rebuild itself forever.

A dream I have:

Buy a large building, probably a former hotel, for the use of homeless or hard off people, single or with families, for at least three months each. Each would have at least two rooms.

When you've been out of work for some time there is no way you can pay rent and food and pay back accumulated debt in the first months after going back to work.

I would also get the best minds together to explore the problem of chronic homelessness and how to intervene. Temporary homelessness will always be with us, and I think that is FINE. That could be defined as 'footloose', rather than homeless.

But the chronic situation is something else again.

Subject: RE: BS: If you were a Billionaire
From: GUEST,number 6
Date: 25 Jun 10 - 01:15 PM

If I won a $billion$

I'd buy the Mudcat from Max (hey, everyone has a price) and then I would become the one and only moderator.

biLL :)

Subject: RE: BS: If you were a Billionaire
From: gnu
Date: 25 Jun 10 - 01:56 PM

sIx... hahahaa.

Re socks of one colour. I already do that. Thick, heavy duty (winter type), light grey socks. They come out of the dryer, into the basket and into the drawer. No matching at all.

One thing I would definitely do if I had a whack of coin is write "Letters to the Editors". I sometimes want to say sommat soooo bad but I don't want my name in the paper.

Subject: RE: BS: If you were a Billionaire
From: gnu
Date: 25 Jun 10 - 01:59 PM

The Lotto Max here is $50M CDN tonight. If I win, I'll reread this thread to make sure I cover all the good ideas... in a week or two.

Subject: RE: BS: If you were a Billionaire
From: Ebbie
Date: 25 Jun 10 - 02:51 PM

Well, somebody is going to win it, Gary. So good luck on it being you! (Don't forget us little people)

Subject: RE: BS: If you were a Billionaire
From: gnu
Date: 25 Jun 10 - 02:59 PM

I heard there are gNomes in Alaska.

Subject: RE: BS: If you were a Billionaire
From: Bill D
Date: 25 Jun 10 - 03:04 PM

To quote the late Senator Everett Dirksen (at least he 'may' have said it...or something close)

"A billion here, a billion there, and pretty soon you're talking real money."

Subject: RE: BS: If you were a Billionaire
From: Mysha
Date: 25 Jun 10 - 04:18 PM

Hi,

More money than I'd ever need personally? How scary the temptation to try and change the world. Yet if countries with a yearly deficit bigger than that can't solve the world's problems; how could I even dream of doing better?

Still, my upbringing tells me it should not go to waste. Let me then use it to mold my surroundings a bit more to my liking. A bit more style, a bit more music, a bit more art, a bit more culture. Nothing that would have life shattering consequences, but things that I might enjoy seeing others enjoy. And yes, if anything was structural, it should probably be set up to wind down gracefully after I was no longer there.

Oh, and of course a nice wicker chair for the Frisian Academy. I can probably have fun occasionally without seriously unbalancing lives.

                                                                Mysha

Subject: RE: BS: If you were a Billionaire
From: frogprince
Date: 25 Jun 10 - 07:01 PM

I'm willing to admit that I would allow myself a few things that I'm not apt to have in reality. A garage large enough to hold a couple of special-occasion cars. I might start with a '57 TBird, and (here goes maybe a couple of hundred thou) a '56 or '57 Continental Mark II, with drive train and suspension from a Lexus 460. Once in a while, if another classic tempted me, I might let one car go and replace it. The other "guilty pleasure" would be travel, to a whole lot of places; even with the billion, neither my wife nor I have any real inclination to travel in highly expensive style; we just like to see stuff.
Next priority: be sure the young people in our families have the opportunity for whatever education they desire. Some of them are set for that already, some not so much so.
Salt away enough to be sure we would always be comfortable, and that leaves by far the most of the billion, and a lot of decisions as how to do the most real good with it. We know people who were largely responsible for starting an orphanage in Baja, Mexico. Besides the orphanage itself, they provide food, clothing, and shelter assistance for a lot of deperately poor working families who are brought into the area from further down Latin America. Beyond that, who knows.

Subject: RE: BS: If you were a Billionaire
From: Leadfingers
Date: 25 Jun 10 - 07:16 PM

Keep doing the gigs til it was gone !

Subject: RE: BS: If you were a Billionaire
From: gnu
Date: 25 Jun 10 - 07:34 PM

Yes, T. Make music and merry!

Subject: RE: BS: If you were a Billionaire
From: gnu
Date: 25 Jun 10 - 07:40 PM

I'll bare my sole... I would immediately seek out a (surrogate?) mother (s?) to bear my children. Ultimately selfish at 53 years old, but true. I don't know if doing good with that kinda coin could eclipse or even come close to stemming the desire to have children.

Subject: RE: BS: If you were a Billionaire
From: SPB-Cooperator
Date: 26 Jun 10 - 02:59 AM

(1) Find my dream place to live.
(2) Make sure my partner's and my living relatives are looked after.
(3) Grow my co-operative business by at least 20 new workers per year.
(4) Reopen the Players tTheatre.
(5) Have enough for my lifestyle.
(6) Pay off my debts.
(7) Buy a pub, and run folk events there every evening and weekend.
(8) Sponsor the building of a full-rigged ship.
(9) Open a UK based Social Enterprise Centre.

and the profits would be used to each year open a Social Enteprise Centre inanother country each year.


Do I get the billion?

Subject: RE: BS: If you were a Billionaire
From: Ebbie
Date: 26 Jun 10 - 03:55 AM

Come to think of it, if you stuck the billion in a BIG box under your bed and fished out $1,000 every day, it would take about 275 years to spend it all. If you invested it and got back just 2 or 3% the interest would give you something like $100,000 a day to spend. So which are you going to do with YOUR billion?

It is quite a lot of money.

Subject: RE: BS: If you were a Billionaire
From: GUEST,Shimrod
Date: 26 Jun 10 - 09:54 AM

"a secluded lakeside hut deep in a remote forest in central/east europe with independent electricity generation
and no neighbours for miles."

But make sure you get yourself inoculated against Lyme Disease and Encephalitis - those beautiful forests swarm with disease bearing ticks.

I'm not anti-wildlife though - far from it - just realistic. In fact I would give my money away to selected wildlife charities. At the moment more and more people are talking about biodiversity, but the human race, as a whole, is still acting like insane passengers, on a transatlantic flight, busily knocking out the rivets which are holding the aeroplane together.

Subject: RE: BS: If you were a Billionaire
From: GUEST,punkfolkrocker
Date: 26 Jun 10 - 10:12 AM

yeah, i've had a day to think about it in more detail..

..and you're absolutely right..

so now amended to:

"a secluded lakeside hut deep in a remote forest in central/east europe with independent electricity generation
and no neighbours for miles..
plus my permanent team of ex-'SAS' personal body guards
and an 'on-standby' air ambulance helicopter.."

well, **** it, why not, i'm a bleediin Billionaire now !!!

Subject: RE: BS: If you were a Billionaire
From: Donuel
Date: 26 Jun 10 - 10:34 AM

I would devote efforts to private energy projects that would take the form of the thin thin film rolls of solar cells that could be adhered to any or all the external surfaces of homes, cars and commercial structures.

Secondly I would further the technology of on board automotive Hydrogen generators using a pittance of electricity to vibrate normal water with a near mircroscopic paddle at its known decoupling frequency and collect the H and O in seperate tanks. Large facilities like gas staions would then allow people to compress the gas they had produced while driving. The H fuel cell used to power in wheel electric motors are currently the best technology for travel which exceeds the speed and power of internal combustion engines. Making fuel on the go with low current as well as brick and morter facilities doing the same on a large scale is the way to go for my money.

Lastly I would buy FOX news corp , first as a silent partner and then as the controling shareholder allowing FOX to be traded. Then I would educate people, not for fear and anxiety as the skewed and mentally screwed Glen Beck does, but to educate in a broad overview that both helps people grow more calm and confident as well as teaching people to learn how to learn, and educate themselves without fear and loathing until most of the hate groups that depend upon ignorance and fear to "infect and collect" fade to a whisper of ignorance instead of the current KLAXON HORN of STUPIDITY.

Subject: RE: BS: If you were a Billionaire
From: deepdoc1
Date: 26 Jun 10 - 10:38 AM

I saw one of those Ed Begley shows where they toured Jackson Browne's SoCal property...I liked it. Plenty of elbow room, off the grid, lot's of techie stuff to play with. After setting myself and family up as needed, I would like to style myself as a philanthropic misanthrope. Heard somewhere in the distant past, "Money can't buy happiness, but if you have enough of it, you can afford the type of misery that suits you best."

I really like the idea of helping folks who want to help themselves, in the vein of Habitat for Humanity, so some sort of funding for hand up, not hand out. Also realizing there are folks who can't help themselves - kids, disabled, etc. - I would have fun getting some help sent thatta way.

But perhaps closest to my misanthropic leanings, I would feel a very strong urge to fund animal rescue groups to help clean up the messes that idiot humans create. Then, possibly, creating a fund to give money to the idiots if they sign a pledge never to procreate. It probably wouldn't work, but it provides me with hours of entertainment nominating candidates for the non-procreation fund.

Without the arts, people are just extra clever apes, so I would like to ensure the creation and continuation of community theaters, music venues, school arts programs, etc. I might need help from other billionaires, so if several of us get the billions, perhaps we could get together for a beverage and sort it out.

JimB

Subject: RE: BS: If you were a Billionaire
From: deepdoc1
Date: 26 Jun 10 - 10:42 AM

@Donuel - great idea about Fox. I would like to buy Fox and put Jon Stewart in charge. Wow, the images that conjures.

Subject: RE: BS: If you were a Billionaire
From: gnu
Date: 26 Jun 10 - 10:53 AM

Jon Stewart... good choice.

Subject: RE: BS: If you were a Billionaire
From: Donuel
Date: 26 Jun 10 - 02:04 PM

I saw the first show Jown Stewart did when he took over the Daily show. From the start I knew he was a good choice.

Subject: RE: BS: If you were a Billionaire
From: gnu
Date: 26 Jun 10 - 02:15 PM

Very funny man and also intelligent, well read, articulate and compassionate. But, every now and then he acts so childish that it upsets me that he lowers himself. Overall, he's a gem.

Subject: RE: BS: If you were a Billionaire
From: deepdoc1
Date: 26 Jun 10 - 03:40 PM

I've heard it called self-deprecating humor, and sometimes he uses it to good effect, other times it's just an annoyance. But all things considered, he's a very effective commentator (or un-common tater if you will) of some of the silliest political and journalitic antics. His feelings for Fox 'news' peso-nalities is fairly obvious, which is why it would be a hoot to put him in charge, assuming he would even take the job.

Subject: RE: BS: If you were a Billionaire
From: Donuel
Date: 26 Jun 10 - 06:11 PM

Is it better to live as a mega wealty monster or die as a good person?