If you win powerball, are you in 1%?

[pErvinalia]

Top 14% by income with my government dole, and top 15% by wealth. Although, that wealth is steadily decreasing as I continue to sell shit off to increase my government dole up to a survivable level (with a bit of internet thrown in).

[Tero]

She can buy all kinds of new shoes and junk for her cats now
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/winne ... ar-AAqErnZ

http://www.nydailynews.com/news/nationa ... -1.3437898

[Scot Dutchy]

When we were one holiday in Ireland at our house there, a local knacker women one the Euro lottery but I cant remember how much. She had to take the ticket to the local Garda barracks for safe keeping. There was war in the family. It was so bad the Garda locked up the whole family.
Money has a strange effect on people.

[Tero]

Only two kids and then eventually grandkids to eventually fight over the money. Looks like no bum husband around:

A colleague was with her at the time she checked her numbers and told her she had won the $758.7 million Powerball jackpot, the second-largest in the game's history. Wanczyk, a mother to a 31-year-old daughter and a 26-year-old son, said she was in shock.

"I couldn't drive anywhere, I couldn't do anything," Wanczyk, who still appeared stunned by her luck, told reporters Thursday.

http://abcnews.go.com/US/758-million-po ... d=49388616

[JimC]

I would establish the finest gin distillery in the whole fucking world, and sell my prized boutique gin for the same price as the cheapest bottle of rotgut gin.

I'm too fucking nice for my own good, really...

[Scot Dutchy]

It is a ridiculous prize. She will probably buy a high powered sports car and kill herself.
I remember those stories went around in the old days of football pools. It often ended with a death or tragic accident.

[Strontium Dog]

Big lottery winners often seem to come to a sticky end. It seems to end in tears for many.

Paradoxically a big win increases your chances of bankruptcy!

This, among many articles on the subject: http://time.com/4176128/powerball-jackp ... y-winners/

Hmm.

If you win the $1.5 billion Powerball jackpot, you may not be as lucky as you may think. Many winners befall the so-called curse of the lottery, with some squandering their fortunes and others meeting tragic ends.

It's not really anything to do with "luck", is it? There's generally a very good reason that people with no money have no money in the first place. Giving them millions of dollars or pounds or euros isn't going to suddenly make them the kind of person who would merit such a fortune, or give them the kind of wisdom to deal with such a huge sum.

[Hermit]

Are you implying that those who inherit their billions are meritorious and wise?

[pErvinalia]

That's exactly what he's implying. He's been saying disgraceful shit like that for years. Silver-spoon liberals. They are all the same.

[Tero]

There is no difference between the idiots and millionaire heirs. The heirs just have a built in protection structure around them from birth. Only the occasional sailing, tennis or flying (one Kennedy went into a spin dive)accident that kills the heirs.

Success with a business that makes a fortune is hit and miss. When throwing money at venture businesses, some are bound to pick winners.Just by chance.

[laklak]

What an utterly stupid bint. She'll be the target of every scam artist, con man, charity, and long lost relative on the planet. What was she thinking? All you have to do is Google "what to do if you win the lottery" and the very first fucking thing they say is do NOT reveal your identity immediately. People will kill you for the $20 in your wallet, imagine what they'll do for $360,000.000 (that's how much she has left after taxes).

[pErvinalia]

Exactly. I couldn't believe it when I saw her on the tele. I would be telling the bare minimum of people.

[Strontium Dog]

Are you implying that those who inherit their billions are meritorious and wise?

As vanishingly small a number of people that is (the overwhelming majority of people with wealth having made it themselves), no, not even slightly. As Tero points out:

There is no difference between the idiots and millionaire heirs. The heirs just have a built in protection structure around them from birth.

Of course, intelligence is mostly inherited too, so if your ancestor was smart enough to make money, chances are you aren't an idiot.

[pErvinalia]

Define "idiot". If "idiot" means not being able to make vast sums of money, then you are probably right. But if "idiot" means driving society to the brink of ecological disaster and causing the unnecessary deaths of the disadvantaged in society, then chances are a lot of people who have made shitloads of money are probably idiots.

[Hermit]

Of course, intelligence is mostly inherited too, so if your ancestor was smart enough to make money, chances are you aren't an idiot.

Money is not a measure of smartness. I'm thinking of all those starving writers, painters, sculptors in their garrets, whose creations are traded for millions and tens of millions after their deaths. And all those bright young children who miss out on the prerequisite educational qualifications to become doctors, bankers, engineers, architects or some such because they don't have the supportive environment to stay with school past eighth grade, while President Bush senior paves his cretinous son's road to a Harvard business degree with bricks of gold.

And how smart is that billionaire Trump, really? He got a kickstart of only a million dollars, they say, and look at him now? Let's be charitable and for a moment forget the number of times he's declared bankruptcy or the number of people who sued him because he failed them for the goods and services they provided him with. It turns out that had done nothing at all except to simply invest that million dollars in bonds, he'd have no less money now than he does after following his mastery of the deal.