Yeah, tell us about that, Pinch.
a former girlfriend wheedled $500,000 out of him while he was drunk
That must be a hell of a girl! Plus, now she’s wealthy.
What a lovely Christmas story.
But let's blame that.
If you want to know what God thinks of money, look at who he gives it to...
Evidence that poverty has a moral dimension as well as an economic one. You can give a poor person a lot of money, but that doesn't make them a rich person. Conversely, some of the richest people on earth haven't a dime.
Money follows value. The inverse is also true.
The obvious answer from the NYT is to stay poor. For example, look at the people that died on the Titanic. If they had stayed in Europe and not wanted to travel to America for a better life, they wouldn't have drowned, would they? Maintain low expectations, don't strive to better yourself, just stay at home.
Poverty is a mental condition as much as it is a financial condition.
I wouldn't want to win the lottery. Honestly. I've seen too many stories about how winning it instantly turns friends and some family into resentful gold-diggers, removes one's incentive to work, and generally erodes one's character.
I've got a job I enjoy doing, and I like knowing that I have to work each day to provide for myself and my family.
*sniff...cough...wheeeeze*...Shame
I'd love to prove myself the exception.
Obligatory Ayn Rand quote.. :P
Excerpt of Francisco's Money Speech, from Atlas Shrugged
----
"But money is only a tool. It will take you wherever you wish, but it will not replace you as the driver. It will give you the means for the satisfaction of your desires, but it will not provide you with desires. Money is the scourge of the men who attempt to reverse the law of causality—the men who seek to replace the mind by seizing the products of the mind.
"Money will not purchase happiness for the man who has no concept of what he wants: money will not give him a code of values, if he's evaded the knowledge of what to value, and it will not provide him with a purpose, if he's evaded the choice of what to seek. Money will not buy intelligence for the fool, or admiration for the coward, or respect for the incompetent. The man who attempts to purchase the brains of his superiors to serve him, with his money replacing his judgment, ends up by becoming the victim of his inferiors. The men of intelligence desert him, but the cheats and the frauds come flocking to him, drawn by a law which he has not discovered: that no man may be smaller than his money. Is this the reason why you call it evil?
"Only the man who does not need it, is fit to inherit wealth—the man who would make his own fortune no matter where he started. If an heir is equal to his money, it serves him; if not, it destroys him. But you look on and you cry that money corrupted him. Did it? Or did he corrupt his money? Do not envy a worthless heir; his wealth is not yours and you would have done no better with it. Do not think that it should have been distributed among you; loading the world with fifty parasites instead of one, would not bring back the dead virtue which was the fortune. Money is a living power that dies without its root. Money will not serve the mind that cannot match it. Is this the reason why you call it evil?
Yeah, tell us about that, Pinch.
Unfortunately, this is how life often unfolds for people who instantly find themselves with lot of money. Just look at Rodney King (the "real" one, not the Freeper who goes by that name, LOL) and see how the money he got from those lawsuits never changed anything. You could give him a million, a billion, or even trillion dollars today . . . and he'd be broke within 90 days.
I'm 39 now. I was thinking how my life would have been different if I had won the lottery at age 22 just before I started my professional career.
The truth was that the first few years working in an office forced me to grow up. I gradually learned to take responsibility for my life. I shifted from being a Marxist to being a conservative.
If I had won the lottery and never had to work, my maturity would probably have been stuck at age 22. I would have had a far less happy life.
It's not so much that a fool and his money are soon parted, but that they were lucky enough to have ever gotten together in the first place.
I rarely buy any tickets. I think I'm up to two in the last 25 years.
I'd be more than willing to take my chances, and find out for myself.
See, if the government had taken all this money in taxes we wouldn't have to be reading this story.
(Leftist answer)
But the lottery helps the schools.