A tale of two worlds... and I forbid you to say, "Yes, but... " in response to the second world.

This is MacKenzie Scott. She was married to the world's richest man, Amazon's Jeff Bezos until recently. She is the world's richest woman at somewhere around $60 billion net worth.

Don't feel too bad for ex-husband, Jeff Bezos. Even though his amicable divorce cost him billions, he remains the world's richest man, having to get by on only $113 billion. If he were to see a one-million dollar bill (not that there is one, because there isn't) lying on the street, it would cost him more--measured in time spent in the effort to pick it up--than he would typically earn for that moment. That's how rich he is.

What does one do with all that money? The answer: anything he/she wants, pretty much.

While I have repeatedly talked about how the most rich have benefitted by every tax break and option in life to increase wealth, which they have, many have shown a benevolent side. MacKenzie Scott has, in the last few months, given $4.1 billion to 384 most worthy causes helping fulfill basic needs for many Americans struggling in these times.

"This pandemic has been a wrecking ball in the lives of Americans already struggling," she says. "Economic losses and health outcomes alike have been worse for women, people of color, and for people living in poverty. Meanwhile, it has substantially increased the wealth of billionaires."

Recipients of her 'no strings attached' benevolence include community colleges and universities like Blackfeet Community College in Montana; food banks and meal providers like Feeding America, America's Second Harvest and Meals on Wheels' and other non-profits.

Many billionaires like Bill Gates and Warren Buffett are benevolent with large foundations organized to donate to worthy causes in the United States and around the world to fight poverty, disease and hunger. Some donate to further their own interests and political influences. Those who have billions can spend without fear of going hungry. It would seem that no billionaire can go broke even if they tried.

That is the world at the top.

This is the world at the bottom as told by one incredibly articulate woman who lives it. 

No writer could tell her story better than she does. Watch! It's just five minutes long-- five of the most real and revealing  minutes you might ever spend. This is Amy Jo Hutchison of West Virginia giving her testimony on February 12, 2020 in front of a Congressional Committee on Oversight and reform about poverty guidelines in America.

Watch here... and don't say "Yes, but... " when finished. 

(you can "skip ads" after a few seconds.)

This is the same America, isn't it? Depends on who you ask. Meanwhile, the federal minimum wage of $7.25/hour remains unchanged for the last 11 1/2 years. The cost of living has risen 23.4 percent in that same time. Really! We ought to be ashamed of ourselves.

A LESSON IN PERSPECTIVE: What makes you so different from Jeff Bezos? Don't we all put our pants on one leg at a time?

This is Jeff Bezos, owner of Amazon and a good many other things, and his ex-wife, Mackenzie Scott. We are just like them in a lot of ways... we breath, eat, sleep, bleed, etc.

But here's a test: If you are walking down the street and see a dollar bill on the sidewalk, what would that look like if you were Jeff Bezos? You see a dollar but he sees $850,000. He is so rich, he has $850,000 (or more) for every dollar you, average person, have. Imagine that!

Jeff Bezos is the richest man in the world at $100 billion-plus. His ex-wife is in the picture because she is in the top 25 richest, worth a modest $36 billion. I'd call that a win-win divorce. So what's the secret everyone should know... if you want to be rich, marry Jeff Bezos... or his ex-wife.

Fact is, most of the very rich have made it themselves, thanks to our tech explosion and new ideas that spring from that. Hats off to the self-made. 

But this isn't about who is richest, it is about personal perspective... our view of life verses his or hers. 

• One mile to us is like infinity to space.
• One good meal a day is like everything to someone who is starving of hunger or dying of thirst.
• One roof over our head is like all the streets and places of the homeless.
• One ocean cruise to us is like all of those refugees trying to find safer grounds for their families and risk their lives at sea and elsewhere in the most unsafe ways for freedom.

It is not only that we are so alike as human beings but that we are so different when it comes to living within our body or viewing the world from our eyes. The world looks and feels different if you are poor or unhealthy or of a different race or place in the world. Try to understand that. Those without do not choose that path. Birthrights are not evenly spaced.

All of which brings us to a twisted Golden Rule: He/she who has the gold, rules. And with means comes opportunity that those less off do not have. 

The richest have experienced great financial gains in the last decade. The top 5 percent have grown by $4.8 million on average while the net worth of families in the lower tiers of wealth have lost ground, decreasing by about 20 percent from 2007 to 2016.

The Stock Market gains have benefitted the wealthy almost unilaterally as 84 percent of stocks are owned by the top 10 percent of the wealthy.

How can we be so alike and so different?

While it is so true that things like cancer, heart attacks, etc. and all of life's maladies don't care how much money or power one has. It's cancer for all. Money cannot buy happiness and health but it does make whatever life led, so much easier to manage with so many more options. The only thing poverty buys is more poverty. And that's how fast we are dividing.

Having money in abundance does come with options, and responsibilities, those less fortunate do not have.  To live in this world, we all have to be human beings and as such, owe each other common decency. If it were not for those who clean up after us, those who don't would have a real mess on their hands. Those who are ill need those who offer care. Those who own businesses need those who work, Those who seek education need teachers, and so on. 

Rich or poor, we have an interdependence to one another. If one group fails, we all fail, even if we don't realize that in the moment. Be mindful, the earlier America that set the stage was built largely on the backs of slaves. 

Biblically stated, the real Golden Rule says "That which you do to the least of our brothers, that, you do for me." Or simply, treat others as you would like to be treated...  fairly, with respect, with dignity, with empathy for problems that exist for them but not even close for you. 

While money tends to divide, humanity does not.

With all the divisiveness that is, 'today normal,' we really must do better, because THIS, is ridiculous.

Step 1: VOTE

Step2: STAND UP FOR THOSE WHO CANNOT STAND UP FOR THEMSELVES.

Step 3: LISTEN WITHOUT MALICE AND TRY TO SEE ANOTHER PERSPECTIVE.

Step 4: DON'T FORGET TO VOTE.

The world has, and always will have, bad actors. I guess we can blame Adam and Eve for that. But don't presume they are everyone that has a different path than you. 

Who would you root for: Cheerleaders A or Cheerleaders B?

You know in your red-blooded American heart, you love the Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders. Made in America and all that stuff, right? And who doesn't love their football team... except for everybody who doesn't wear a 10-gallon hat and cowboy boots and has a heart big as the dang whole state of everlovin' Texas? So make your choice, but remember,  if you choose wrong, you may wind up rooting for the Bears... or worse, the Cubs.

Cheerleaders A?

Or Cheerleaders B?

Are you kidding me... technology has spoken and the only obvious choice is... Cheerleaders B, the made in Japan darlings that balance and move in sync on gyro-centric balls as they wave plastic pompons. They form circles and squares and giant hearts as they dance to Japan-pop music. (All true.) Makes you want to say "GO PATRIOTS!" or something.

And they are good, though short. The tallest "girl" is only 14 inches tall... as is the shortest. Their hair is specially coiffed of sponge-like material in the latest fashion and most important, as in the Miss America Pageant, they have back-ups in the wings just in case one stumbles and fractures a ball, or something.

Is this the end for the Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders? Loose heart NOT, America... I have the perfect plan to save this American chauvinist tradition. There is a football league that has gone cheerleader-less since its inception in 1947 that would pay many hundreds of Monopoly dollars for a squad of beauties to turn their hearts.

The Vibration Football League of America (VFL) all-stars have played a heartless game for almost 70 years where the only sound in the stadium is the constant whirring of the field as the players jockey for a score. These guys are so good they don't even use playbooks.

For half-time entertainment (which TV viewers can't see anyway because of the demand for advertising dollars) the bicycle-riding robots, Murata and his lovely robot-unicyclist friend Murata Girl (also true) will perform at every game.

PS: The rumor is out, Amazon founder and chief, Jeff Bezos, who recently purchased the Washington Post newspaper, is considering buying the Washington Redskins, changing the team nickname to the Pollywogs (pending approval by the Friends of Amphibians Assn.) and  using not only robot cheerleaders and half-time entertainment but all robot coaches. There will be no silly "hiding-your-mouth-with-a-program" on his team because robots don't move their lips. Aside: there are already great robot ventriloquists in disguise "killing" in Las Vegas. Score one already.

Why not robot players you may ask... because even robots know it is not a good idea to get hit in the head as a game. They may be robots but they have techno-brains and techno-common sense. 

Remember this really great joke?

Amazon founder, Jeff Bezos

Sorry about the repeat, but it sets up a neat story about Jeff Bezos, founder of Amazon Books. Here's that story again... but better:

In the olden (pre-Google) days, a guy rushing for his train in Grand Central Station in NYC is running late. He stops a stoop-shouldered, bedraggled little man huffing and puffing as he struggles to carry two enormous suitcases.

"Hey friend," asks our commuter, "can you tell me what time it is?"

The man stops, grateful to be able to put his monstrously heavy suitcases on the floor and rest. As he wipes sweat from his brow, he looks as his watch and tells the harried commuter, "It is exactly 5:17.26 1/2 pm on the 365,276th day, 4th hour, 38th minute and 52 1/2 second past the birth of Christ, a Thursday in leap year 0, when the sun warmed the day to 82 degrees fahrenheit or 27.777778 celcius."

"Wow!" said the commuter who was literally stopped in his tracks. "Your watch told you all of that?"

"Oh," says the watch owner, "my watch will tell you anything you would ever want to know. Is Elvis alive? Is O.J. Simpson the real killer? When will the Cubs win the pennant? Anything, really.

 "WOW! I've GOT to have one! Where can I buy a watch like that?"

"You can't," says the little man. "You see, I invented this watch and it knows EVERYTHING... but it is one of a kind and it is mine."

"But I'll give you anything for that watch," says the commuter.  "ANYTHING! I must have that watch."

After 5 minutes of intense haggling, the commuter convinces the watch inventor--with the help of $2 million dollars--to sell him the watch. Happily, he straps it on his wrist, says "Thank you so much," and starts to run in hopes of catching his train.

"Wait... WAIT," hollers the watchmaker, pointing to the enormous suitcases sitting on the floor, "Don't you want the batteries?"

See? It is better the second time... oh, sorry.

 

So how does that have anything to do with Jeff Bezos? Eerily, quit a lot. You see, Bezos is much more that Amazon, Zappos or on-line shopping. He has other stuff that has almost nothing to do with his $18.4 billion net worth (#26 on the Billionaire list, just ahead of Scrooge McDuck, I think).  

One of those other ventures--the one that triggered this joke lead-in-- is Bezos' $42 million, 200-foot-tall, "10,000 Year Clock" that he is building deep inside a mountain on the property he owns in Texas, not far from his commercial rocket-launch site. (Yeah, really.)  

And it is, as so many things in life are, eerie. A joke that is perhaps 50-years-old becomes real-life in another time... another era. Nothing disappears, it just regenerates in a different form. While this sounds like it might be another joke, the story is real.

Bezos told The Wall Street Journal,  "It's like a grandfather clock on a grander scale. When it's finished, it will play an elaborate cukoo-like sequence for the anniversary of every year, decade, century, millennium and 10 millennia. 

"People who visit the clock when it is finished years from now will also be treated to a daily chime sequence that has been choreographed by musician Brian Eno (got that crossword fans), who serves on the project's board."

"The reason I'm doing it," says Bezos, "is that it is a symbol of long-term thinking, and the idea of long-term responsibility... We humans have become so technologically sophisticated that in certain ways we're dangerous to ourselves. It's going to be increasingly important over time for humanity to take a longer-term view of its future."

Impressive... in a vague, symbolic- sort-of way. And so is the 48-year-old Bezos. 

But if the watch batteries in my story took two enormously big suitcases, how big will the batteries need to be for this 10,000-year clock? Pretty darned small in today's world is my guess. The constant, of course, is the quest for knowledge, place and perspective.

Next joke: A horse walks into a bar...