On That Huge Powerball Jackpot Tonight

Once again, I am reminded of my two favorite quotes on millionaires.

"I am opposed to millionaires, but it would be dangerous to offer me the position." 

 --Mark Twain, US humorist, novelist, short story author, & wit (1835 - 1910)

and 

"I've never been a millionaire but I just know I'd be darling at it."

--Dorothy Parker US author, humorist, poet, & wit (1893 - 1967)

Good luck, y'all.  Have a great weekend. Regardless.

Link:  $900 Million Prize, 1 In 292 Million Odds — And A Few More Lottery Numbers

Patriotic Millionaires! On The Daily Show Tonight!

Check out the Patriotic Millionaires tonight on Jon Stewart's The Daily Show at 10 pm:

Notes on a large Powerball jackpot prize

Literally that, notes on tonight's near-record Powerball jackpot prize drawing:

1) If you were one of 175,223,510 people (you can't imagine that many), standing, say, in the middle of them, and a mile up someone with a paper airplane was to gently push it out over that crowd, that's how likely it is you'd get the jackpot prize;

2) If we must have lotteries for millions--and apparently we must--someone needs to set one up where each winner wins, at most, 1 million dollars. It would spread the prize out over the region and state and nation and do far more good for far more people and it would be greatly less likely to mess people up with such large sums. Could you imagine if 600 people tonight each won $1 million, spread out equally over the entire country? It would do a nation of good, in not a world;

3) If no one wins tonight, it will get perilously close to 1 billion dollars for a jackpot prize Wednesday evening.

That's crazy.

4) If one person only wins this second-largest-ever jackpot prize, it will likely--very likely--screw them up.

That said, when it comes to lots of money, I defer to Mark Twain's quote:

"I am opposed to millionaires, but it would be dangerous to offer me the position."

And Dorothy Parker's:

“I don't know much about being a millionaire, but I'll bet I'd be darling at it.”

Good luck campers and have a great weekend.

Quote of the day

“Socialism never took root in America because the poor see themselves not as an exploited proletariat but as temporarily embarrassed millionaires.” -John Steinbeck

Feeling nostalgic, America?

 

'Nuff said. (With thanks and a nod to friend Bob M. for this).

The US Middle Class is "radically shrinking"---and here are statistics to prove it

* 83 percent of all U.S. stocks are in the hands of 1 percent of the people. • 61 percent of Americans "always or usually" live paycheck to paycheck, which was up from 49 percent in 2008 and 43 percent in 2007. • 66 percent of the income growth between 2001 and 2007 went to the top 1% of all Americans. • 36 percent of Americans say that they don't contribute anything to retirement savings. • A staggering 43 percent of Americans have less than $10,000 saved up for retirement. • 24 percent of American workers say that they have postponed their planned retirement age in the past year. • Over 1.4 million Americans filed for personal bankruptcy in 2009, which represented a 32 percent increase over 2008. • Only the top 5 percent of U.S. households have earned enough additional income to match the rise in housing costs since 1975. • For the first time in U.S. history, banks own a greater share of residential housing net worth in the United States than all individual Americans put together. • In 1950, the ratio of the average executive's paycheck to the average worker's paycheck was about 30 to 1. Since the year 2000, that ratio has exploded to between 300 to 500 to one. • As of 2007, the bottom 80 percent of American households held about 7% of the liquid financial assets. • The bottom 50 percent of income earners in the United States now collectively own less than 1 percent of the nation’s wealth. • Average Wall Street bonuses for 2009 were up 17 percent when compared with 2008. • In the United States, the average federal worker now earns 60% MORE than the average worker in the private sector. • The top 1 percent of U.S. households own nearly twice as much of America's corporate wealth as they did just 15 years ago. • In America today, the average time needed to find a job has risen to a record 35.2 weeks. • More than 40 percent of Americans who actually are employed are now working in service jobs, which are often very low paying. • or the first time in U.S. history, more than 40 million Americans are on food stamps, and the U.S. Department of Agriculture projects that number will go up to 43 million Americans in 2011. • This is what American workers now must compete against: in China a garment worker makes approximately 86 cents an hour and in Cambodia a garment worker makes approximately 22 cents an hour. • Approximately 21 percent of all children in the United States are living below the poverty line in 2010 - the highest rate in 20 years. • Despite the financial crisis, the number of millionaires in the United States rose a whopping 16 percent to 7.8 million in 2009. • The top 10 percent of Americans now earn around 50 percent of our national income. Link to original post: http://finance.yahoo.com/tech-ticker/the-u.s.-middle-class-is-being-wiped-out-here's-the-stats-to-prove-it-520657.html?tickers=^DJI,^GSPC,SPY,MCD,WMT,XRT,DIA

What we--the US--are really good at

Okay, so in the last few months, I've put up different evaluations of nations about "best places to live", as determined by Forbes Magazine and others and now here's one from Business Week. It tells of what nations have the most millionaires. And this, of course, is what the US is really good at. Yes, we're at the top for creating millionaires. Yippee. Sure, there should be good ways for smart, hard-working people to achieve, excel and get ahead in the commerical world and lots of millionaires could be just fine, sure. What's bad and unfair and wrong and inappropriate is when the wealthy class gets big and then bigger and bigger, while the middle class is shrinking and the lowest classes are rising. That's a recipe for disaster and defeat for a country. And it's, statistically, where we've been headed. Link to original story: http://finance.yahoo.com/family-home/article/109838/countries-with-the-most-millionaires?mod=career-work