Where does greed end?

[digitaldiscipline]

I've been a frequent proponent of looking out for you and yours as being at, if not near, the top of the ol' priority heap. I've also been known to express the sentiment that it's not necessary to be an asshole to do this.

I tend to view ignoring, or at least not interfering with, someone else's efforts to look out for them and theirs as slightly positive to neutral.

I won't belabor my financial frustrations to the stubborn folks who continue to read my tripe. Let's just say that my household is far from being in an ideal or comfortable situation and leave it at that.

I'm sure many of you may have heard rumblings about the Powerball jackpot reaching dizzying heights.

I'm aware of the arguments for and against playing, at least in lieu of holding down a steady job. I've often used that bit of bumper-sticker wisdom: "Lottery: a tax on the math-impaired" myself - I think it's both clever and accurate.

At present, the jackpot is in the MLB/NBA-contract vicinity of $170 million - which is enough to get most people's attention, and even open the wallets of non-regular participants [including Your Humble Scribe]. It may or may not get the attention of distant love interests, but would probably work very well at drumming old acquaintences and unsavory familial types out of the woodwork.

However, this brings me to my pit-stop on the way back to the office after lunch, where I was politely idled behind as I strolled the parking lot to pick up a handful of hope and a pint of Cran/Raz, by a woman driving this.

I certainly don't begrudge the wealthy the trinkets that go with it - other than it being pearlescent white, it's a really nice f*cking car. But it seems that the entire raison d` etre for this particular errand was. . . to buy a quintet of Powerball tickets.

As someone who's lately been giving serious consideration to the idea of home ownership, it's more convenient to ignore the fact that a simple two-seat conveyance costs approximately what my current pre-approval for a mortgage would pay for than dwell on it. Hearing the frustrations of friends with well-paying jobs in inconveniently expensive locations detail the trouble of finding even moderately-sized housing under three hundred and fifty grand hasn't done much to buoy my spirits. Our discussionary foil, Missuz Mercedes, lives in a nice development that meets these criteria. Those of you who enjoy watching golf may well have seen her neighborhood this past weekend, since the HP Classic is held just down the way, in posh English Turn. It's nice, if a bit stuffy, and inconvenient to get into and out of, but very clearly an enclave for wealth.

But I am left to wonder - with poverty so locally prevalent (one of the singular features of New Orleans is the lack of zoning, so that affluent developments are cheek-by-jowl with rent-controlled row housing). . . Missuz Mercedes and her inferred husband (or at least her lucrative half of a pre-nup) obviously aren't hurting financially. . . so why go out of their way to take a shot at the lotto? Statistically, most lottery participants are not nearly so high on the hog; is "financially disadvantaged" still the correct term?

But for someone who seemingly doesn't -need- a financial windfall put their hat in the ring, either to win the whole enchilada outright, or split the prize with someone who will almost certainly have been starting off a lot further down the economic curve. . . it troubles me.

Those of you who frequent blogspace or any of the myriad online communities that are rife with the occasional Twenty Questions polls (or any of their iterations) have probably seen some variant of "What would you do if you won the lottery?" as a topic. I've spun that hypothetical junket a time or three myself.

But I'm left to wonder how different Mrs. Mercedes' answers might be from someone who lives a block away from the gas station, in the projects. Or how different mine are from either of theirs.

I can say, however, that it's only the kind of question I'd answer once.

Comments

[hellsop.livejournal.com]

Same reason everyone else is buying tickets: It's a lot more money than she's already got. And everyone's threshold of how much money is "too much" varies. (Please note that this has very different criteria than "enough", to which some sort of objective standards can be applied.) A person with a PII wants a P4. A person with a P4 wants a 4-way Opteron. A person with a 4-way Operton wants a rack full of SunBlades.

[etcet.livejournal.com]

I dunno, man. . . a rack full of sunblades probably doesn't have a single AGP8x or PCI-X slot. . . where would a guy stick an Ati X800 Platinum Edition to get premium framerates?

;-)