Ten years ago, you were the sole winner of the largest Powerball jackpot in history - that means it was at least 600 million dollars. Let’s round it up to 750.
For our purposes, it doesn’t matter whether you elected to take the lump sum or the payments. Either way, your veritable army of accountants, hedge fund managers, and financial planners have successfully turned your enormous fortune into a truly obscene one.
In the last ten years, you’ve been spending money left, right and center. You’ve set up dozens of endowments and charities to champion your pet causes. You have lobbyists in every corner of the world buying votes to make the world the better place you know it can be.
Nevertheless, your money continues to make money. Barring a concerted effort on your part to divest it entirely, it’s an effectively unlimited font. Your spendable assets number in the billions.
So, all that said, what would your mega purchase be? I’m talking about Michael Jackson dropping a hundred million (in 2015 dollars) on the ATV catalogue, or the various billionaires who spend hundreds of millions on superyachts.
To be clear, in this hypothetical you are already firing on all cylinders in terms of philanthropy. Once that’s done… now what?
Don’t need answer fast. I’ve got ten more years to become a billionaire.
I think I’d build a roller-coaster-style transit line from the subway in Vaughan, Ontario (just north of the Toronto city limits) to the Wonderland theme park. It would have mild hills and curves, but would have larger enclosed cars designed for regular passenger operation. The track would be cantilevered dramatically over roads, pass through buildings (constructed for the purpose if necessary), and swing wide in curves.
A billion dollars to the Native Hawaiians to f*** off forever and go worship their ancestors somewhere else. If this seems a little harsh, I really just want them to vacate claims to Mauna Kea, which is a unique site ideally suited to building awesome telescopes. In the 21st century I think cultural sensitivity to superstitious nonsense should not outweigh awesome telescopes. Especially since their more recent ancestors showed their respect for the sacred site by basically stripmining the place. Did I mention the awesome telescopes?
You said unlimited, right? So I’d fund an intensive research program that would enable me to live in a transparent dome on a moon of Saturn. I imagine the grocery runs alone would cost a hundred billion a year.
ETA: oh yeah, and stock it with that harem of two girls of each race.
Just a plane? That’s chump change. Unless we’re talking about one of those ultra-wealthy 747 refits, I’m going to have to revoke your hypothetical billionaire license.
Ten thousand hectares of tame woodland, tax-free on the condition I maintain it in pristine state, or a supply agreement for either water, or timber, or what have you. It must have a big enough lake and a navigable river.
I’d buy just over 10,000 acres north of lake Coeur D’alene and build myself a sustainable town so that after global warming his my friends and I can live a flashed life and ignore the rest of the work. I figure we could sustain about 250 people there which should be enough to fight of the murading hordes.
A Bond villain lair. Big castle, lots of land, and an underground secret lair big enough that you have to use golf carts to travel from the vehicle bay to the shooting range. Kind of like Disneyland, only without the sticky popcorn smell.
Buy an amusement park/art museum/skyscraper/Times Square/heck, all of NYC, just so I can run through it all alone.
I’ve always had an appreciation for original manuscripts of creative works I admire, too - the Beatles’/Bob Dylan’s original lyric sheets, the Wodehouse papers posted here in the Marketplace not too long ago, etc.
I’d build and stock a museum about dogs on the Isle of Dogs. It’s not just that I like dogs, it’s that there don’t seem to be many museums about them, and also I like puns.
Plus tons of university scholarships. Hell, my own university!
