The Difference Between You and a Rich Person

You probably have an idea of where you stand between the richest and the poorest. 

Here are some of the extremes:

The C.E.O. of Palantir, a data mining company that gets half of it's revenue from government contracts, earned $1.1 billion ($1,100.000,000) last year and was the highest paid executive of a publicly traded company.

If you were paid the U.S. minimum legal wage of $7.25/hr. (which hasn't changed since 2009), you would have to work 137.931,034.5 consecutive hours (15,749 years) to make that much... if you could live that long. Even Methuselah, who lived to celebrate his 969th birthday says the bible, would just make chump change.

But thankfully, most of us--but not all--are making more than minimum.

Even if you were pulling down $100/hr. 24/7, you would have to work100 non-stop years to make that much. Oh, not that $100/hr. is shabby. In a regular 40 hour work week you would be making $208,000 annually... certainly comfortable perhaps but not rich by current standards.

Here's an incredibly beautiful example of how hard it is to be rich when you are trying to give it all away. It's called "win-win."

MacKenzie Scott, Jeff Bezos's ex and one of the richest women in the world, made a pledge to give all of her fortune away. Despite her great effort, she is finding that harder to do than you could imagine.

She just announced a new round of grants that give $2.74 billion directly to non-profits for benevolent uses. This is her third such donation since her 2019 divorce that awarded her billions in Amazon stock, which keeps growing beyond her generosity. She has already donated $8 billion before but she keeps getting richer. 

Ah, the curse of the rich. Those who have no need keep growing richer just by breathing. And, latest revelations show, they pay less tax proportionally than you do and some pay no tax at all. Try to tell the I.R.S. that and see how far you get before being thrown into jail.

 But thank you, MS Scott for the continuing effort.  

And that's why we often feel those ultra rich are so above us in more ways than one.

When the Mexico City Metro disaster ,which claimed 26 lives and horribly altered so many more, was blamed on construction flaws and political pressure, Mexico's President, Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador explained, "The humble and hard working people understand that, unfortunately, these things happen"...  but not to him.

See what I mean? Being that rich is unfathomable in so many ways. If you found a ten dollars bill, you'd feel lucky. If you were that rich, you might see hundreds of ten-dollar bills on the street as just litter, and to them, you'd be right.

But here's the harder to understand: Our Founding Fathers promised in The Declaration of Independence "... that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness." 

That is backed by 27 amendments to date--from freedom of speech to rights to vote--and also  the right to own more guns per capita than any other country in the world... another inalienable right. Seems some inalienable rights are easier to handle than others.

We are a capitalist country built for many to make money. There is no sin in that. Many of the moneyed are generous thinkers and doers. But we don't do that well for those at the bottoms side of the system, unable for so many reasons to put food on the table for family and children, to be able to receive needed health care, to have a roof over their heads, to have the basic footing to pull themselves up. Money makes money automatically. Lack of money makes poverty, automatically. 

Trump's tax act in 2017 literally made billions for the top, just a pittance for the middle and almost non existent for the bottom. So why today, for infrastructure and health care, food on the table and opportunity for those unable to grasp it themselves, can't we take a lesser sum back and make sure everyone has some proportional tax to pay? That just makes common sense. See more here.

Life is not fair. We, as Americans, could... should do better to balance the scale. Where the top 10 wealthiest are richer than the all of bottom half of us combined, there is room. It's an attitude problem.

So, all this time it was real. UFOs are seen almost daily by military and commercial pilots. And ETs are here now, maybe... just maybe.

E.T. The Extra-terrestrial (1982)

No matter how cleverly disguised, there is a growing belief that UFOs exist and ETs (extra terrestrials) may already be here. Ufologists (Those who study UFOs) have seen public sightings rise to more than 7,200 per year.

From The New York Times recently:

"WASHINGTON — American intelligence officials have found no evidence that aerial phenomena witnessed by Navy pilots in recent years are alien spacecraft, but they still cannot explain the unusual movements that have mystified scientists and the military, according to senior administration officials briefed on the findings of a highly anticipated government report.

"The report determines that a vast majority of more than 120 incidents over the past two decades did not originate from any American military or other advanced U.S. government technology, the officials said."

Photo taken by a US Navy pilot

The Pentagon acknowledges that we are seeing unexplainable and incredible things in the sky. And finally admitting, so are they... things so mind-blowing in appearance and performance that we can't yet imagine how that could be.

I personally accept that there could be aliens and UFOs because, why not? The universe is the most mind-blowing actuality that engulfs us... for real. And who can say that we, a tiny speck in unending space, are alone and supreme. That takes some nerve and/or naivety.

 

We've had our fun and movies aplenty in disbelief. If you've seen the 1996 movie Mars Attacks!, you know how dangerous it could be to us humans if Martians choose to ''take over." This movie has the credibility of superstars Jack Nicholson, Glen Close, Annette Bening, Pierce Brosnan, Michael J. Fox, Martin Short and Danny DeVito, so would they lie?... unless they were themselves, aliens?

Do Not Panic! I repeat, Do Not Panic! (Just pretend there is a gasoline shortage.) The increase in sightings is not seen as an imminent invasion, but because of covid, more people are looking to the skies and noticing "things."

Which begs the question: What then will we do when we actually make human contact and perhaps, find them among us? That, my friends, is a knotty next step. Fortunately, this has been given some cogent thought by someone more conceptual than me. More on that later.

Do we fight or do we flee... or are they friends? And why wouldn't they be... unless they look as us and see squabbling and differences filled with hate, spite, racism and polarization and decide "Who wants to buy into that?" So how will it all go down?

Most interesting guess so far was a 1959 episode of the then popular TV series, Twilight Zone, titled, 'To Serve Man."

The show was in black and white (that is, before color television) and the opening was solemnly spoken by series originator Rod Serling: 

"Respectfully submitted for your perusal – a Kanamit. Height: a little over nine feet. Weight: in the neighborhood of three hundred and fifty pounds. Origin: unknown. Motives? Therein hangs the tale, for in just a moment, we're going to ask you to shake hands, figuratively, with a Christopher Columbus from another galaxy and another time. This is the Twilight Zone."

*THE STORY UNFOLDS: The setting changes to several months earlier, on Earth. The Kanamits, a race of 9-foot-tall (2.7 m) aliens, land on Earth as the planet is beset by international crises. As the Secretary-General announces the landing of aliens on Earth to the worldwide public at a United Nations news conference, one of the aliens arrives and addresses the assembled delegates and journalists via telepathy. He announces that his race's motive in coming to Earth is to provide humanitarian aid by sharing their advanced technology, including an atomic generator that can provide electric power for a few dollars, a nitrate fertilizer that can end famine, and a force field that can be deployed to prevent international warfare. After answering questions, the Kanamit departs without comment and leaves a book in the Kanamit language, which leads to Michael Chambers, a US government cryptographer, being pressed into service.

Initially wary of an alien race who came "quite uninvited", international leaders begin to be persuaded of the Kanamits' benevolence when their advanced technology puts an end to hunger, energy shortages, and the arms race. Trust in the Kanamits seems to be justified when Patty, a member of the cryptography staff led by Chambers, decodes the title of the Kanamit book: "To Serve Man." The Kanamits submit to interrogation and polygraph, at the request of the UN delegates. When declaring their benevolent intentions, the polygraph indicates that the Kanamit is speaking the truth.

Soon, humans are volunteering for trips to the Kanamits' home planet, which they describe as a paradise. Kanamits now have embassies in every major city on Earth. With the U.S. Armed Forces having been disbanded and world peace having been achieved, the code-breaking staff has no real work to do, but Patty is still trying to work out the meaning of the text of To Serve Man.

The day arrives for Chambers's excursion to the Kanamits' planet. Just as he mounts the spaceship's boarding stairs, Patty runs toward him in great agitation. While being held back by a Kanamit guard, Patty cries: "Mr. Chambers, don't get on that ship! The rest of the book, 'To Serve Man,' it's... it's a cookbook!" Chambers tries to run back down the stairs, but a Kanamit blocks him, the stairs retract, and the ship lifts off.

Chambers is in the shipboard room now, and is again offered a meal. He throws it to the floor, but a Kanamit retrieves it and encourages him to eat: "We wouldn't want you to lose weight". At last Chambers, in one of the few instances of the series where a character breaks the fourth wall, says to the audience: "How about you? You still on Earth, or on the ship with me? Really doesn't make very much difference, because sooner or later, we'll all of us be on the menu... all of us." The episode closes as Chambers gives in and breaks his hunger strike.

*Thanks to Wikipedia for this synopsis.