all that money

What are you going to do with all that money?

There’s been a lot of chatter about billionaires lately. Which itself is very funny to me because when I was a kid I couldn’t conceptualize what a billion dollars even is, and if I thought someone had that much money his face was on a Monopoly box. Now they’re this sketchy group of nerds that half the country is trying to take down a notch while the other half tears their clothes and gnashes their teeth at the thought. I’m not going to get too political here, but I have one question—what are you going to do with all that money?

It’s the question they ask lottery winners or Jeopardy champions on TV, and if you’re like me you probably have an idea of how you’d answer. That’s because if I were to be presented with a large sum of money, currently I would be saying “Well X amount will be going to my student loan servicers. Y amount will be going to my good friends at the credit card company, and with the $20 I have left I’ll probably get dinner.” That’s where I’m at, and that’s where millions of Americans are at.

But that’s just for a dollar amount that I can clearly allocate. $50,000 would be a life-changing amount of money to me today, but I can deduct line items from it and in a couple of days have completely depleted it. A billion dollars? I can imagine where I would get started, but after a week of house shopping and vacation planning I’d kind of be like okay now what? So when I see people like Bezos and Gates and all the others in the billionaires club with tens of billions of dollars to their name, I get itchy.

The point of money is to spend it, right? Because we designed our global society on this transfer of paper money for goods and services vital to life itself. Everything beyond what you need to survive is excess. And a little excess isn’t necessarily a bad thing. A lot of excess would not be that bad of a thing in my opinion, except when there are people who have nothing. It’s because of the state of wealth inequality and the sheer amount of poverty in the world that I really am wondering okay what are you going to do with all the money?

Bill Gates said in an interview last week, 

“Maybe I’m just too biased to think that if you create a company that’s super valuable, that at least some part of that you should be able to have — a little bit for consumption, and the balance to do philanthropic things.”

I think that’s one of the major points of contention over billionaires—people think “Bill Gates changed all of our lives with Microsoft, so he deserves all that money.” To that I say sure, credit where credit is due—but at what point is historical recognition, the eternal gratitude of humanity, and the sheer power of knowing you’re one of the brains behind modern technology not enough to compensate for your work? At a certain point the money that people like Gates accumulate becomes more than they could even spend on their own interests so why do they want to keep so much of it? They don’t carry their money around like a trophy. They’re not putting their literal cash on display for all to see. What is it for?

Money is not impressive. What do you get for being the richest person in the world? A pat on the back. Your name at the top of a list on a website or in a book? You will still be subject to the human condition. You can afford to have a better life than most people, and to these ultra-rich, I say go for it. You may have earned that at least! But the thing is—after you do all that, you still have so much left over.

I can understand one of these people saying “Well I don’t trust the government to appropriately use my billions,” as a reason to not want the tax. Because it’s a fact that governments can be corrupt and misuse tax dollars. But I also haven’t heard any of these guys offer up a better suggestion. Sure, Bill Gates does a lot of philanthropy. He even started a major initiative to encourage more wealthy folks to do the same, but it’s not enough. If you can change the world once with a computer, I don’t see why you can’t do it again with your money. 

There was this little period one time when I was a teenager where in the course of maybe two weeks my mom gave me $20 on two separate occasions, and both times I lost it. While I’ve rarely been in the position to be able to just “throw away” $20, much less $40, but losing this money was not detrimental. And to ration with my misfortune (or irresponsibility) I just reason that someone who needed it will find it. I was blessed to have the $20 in the first place, now hopefully someone will find it and maybe that will allow them to eat for the first time in a day. When you have enough for yourself, why can’t you take the gamble to see what someone else can do with your excess? Spread the wealth.

Boycott Taylor Swift

Here we go.

If any of you know me personally, you know that I am not a fan of Taylor Swift. For me, it started with the music. I am not a fan of country music, so I wasn’t really into her at first. Then she got into a more pop sound so I kind of liked her okay. Who didn’t jam out to “You Belong With Me” in 7th grade? Then something changed for me. I don’t know what, if I just got tired of her music and then full on didn’t like her or if something actually happened. I don’t remember. Either way by the time she was working on her plot to destroy America, I was over her.

Let me tell you about my issues with her now. First of all, I’ve always kind of seen her as a sellout. She’s from Pennsylvania, which can be a little hick-y in some parts, but not so much Reading, her hometown. So when she decides to go into country music, I personally see that as kind of fake. Like you’re singing with a twang, but you’re from the Northeast… Alright. THEN she sold out of country music into her transitional period. Where she was still winning country music awards but her music was basically pop. Again, I couldn’t care less about country music and who gets awards, but it’s kind of sketchy that she couldn’t pick a side and it seems to me she was trying to capitalize on the music industry. And now, she’s moved from being a pop princess to trying to rebrand herself as not only a pop singer, but a New Yorker city-loving girl. Again, she’s from Pennsylvania. Who is the real Taylor Swift?

No matter where she’s pretending to be from, she’s just a money hungry selfish businesswoman. I get it. We’re all trying to make a living here. But most artists in the industry are in it for the music, and I question Taylor’s motivation. She pretends to be this All-American sweetheart with a group of perfect little minions, but she’s evil.

What other artist sues their own fans for creating their own memorabilia? I can’t think of anyone. She does this. I’m all for artists making money off of their work. I think it is hard to make it big in that business. But she has made it big. She’s worth $200 million. Yet she sues her own fans for creating paraphernalia with her face on it, and has even sued the man who allegedly taught her how to play guitar. These are everyday people with probably everyday jobs, and she will not allow them to make a cent off of her. You can’t even play her music on Spotify EVEN if you pay for it.

But it’s not all about the money. If Taylor Swift is such a good and sweet girl, what is she doing for this world? She throws money at some charities here and there, so that’s nice, but easy. Her most public cause I think most people would argue is her feminism. This is problematic.

Taylor Swift is only a feminist when it is beneficial to her moneymaking schemes. A majority of her hits come from break-ups. That’s like her MO. And she eventually took a lot of heat from that. She was teased about dating a lot of men, being a crazy person, etc. And that was all funny until she started bringing up the point that men like John Mayer, whom she dated, are notorious womanizers and serial daters, yet get none of the attention like she does. As soon as she said it, everyone was like “Yay super feminist Taylor Swift!” but that was it.

NOW she has started all this beef with Nicki Minaj (BIG mistake), and not only made a statement about her stance on racism, but also contradicted her whole mantra. While unnecessarily defending herself, Taylor made a comment about “women putting down other women.” This is not the first time she has taken this stance. Back in 2013, about Tina Fey and Amy Poehler poking fun at her, Taylor said,

“You know, Katie Couric is one of my favorite people, because she said to me she had heard a quote that she loved, that said, ‘There’s a special place in hell for women who don’t help other women.'”

YET, in the tweet, Taylor Swift was defending her music video for her song, “Bad Blood.” “Bad Blood” is a song that Taylor admittedly wrote about another female artist. She wrote a song about how much she was hurt by this other artist, and created a whole music video where she gets her girl gang together to destroy this other FEMALE artist. Idea for her next song: “Foot in Mouth Syndrome.”

Leaving out the whole part about Nicki Minaj talking about racism, and Taylor Swift thinking it’s about her… Taylor Swift is a monster.