Y'all like money?
I like it. Who don't?
For those of you that think it can't buy happiness consider this...if I was stinky rich I could quit my job and blog full time. Think about how much happier you'd all be if I posted everyday. So, it is theoretically possible for money to create a set of circumstances in which happiness can thrive.
What money can not do is overcome misery.
http://www.wlbt.com/story/16541232/stuart-irby-found-dead
A couple of years ago, this scion and his wife plowed their Mercedes, at speed, into a pick up truck carrying two young doctors. Not a skid mark in sight. Hit 'em like a heat seeking missile and with similar results. The doctors, a young couple, were dead on the spot.
http://www.wapt.com/r/18864251/detail.html
The Irby's are a very prominent family here...the wreck was horrific and a young couple, two medical iterns, were killed. It was a big sordid story and one that's gotten more bizarre as it's gone along.
Everybody assumed they were drunk...Stuart was known to be most of the time. They were fighting. Karen was trying to end it. Was she even driving.
She certainly went to jail for it. Stuat's brain was permanently damaged...so they said. He was supposedly speaking in a foreign language half the time. Soon after his release from the hospital he was arrested for sending dirty decopauge pieces to a minor...cutting pictures of the girl's face out and sticking them on the bodies of porn stars...allegedly. There was talk of assault charges too against the girls mother. During one of the hearings Stuart stood up and walked out of court like leaving a restaurant after the bill had been paid. Most recently he was picked up on a DUI...WHILE ON HOUSE ARREST!
Money will buy you enough rope.
Then Karen was granted clemency by the outgoing Govenor. Just one of many clemencies and pardons that have caused a stink.
Last night Stuart's caretaker found him hangin.
Dirty decoupage pictures to a minor? Jesus.
ReplyDeleteMistress La Spliffe...haven't seen you for a while.
ReplyDeleteIt''s so deranged...was it a side effect? Is that who he really was all along?
The whole story's just sick and bizarre...and just dark.
Oof, weird. And horrible.What a shame that so many lives were ruined.
ReplyDeleteIt certainly makes you think!
ReplyDeleteSP
Yeah. I've often pondered what 'just enough' money was - 'just enough' to make sure I could blog and smoke and drive and stay in the occasional good fun hotel (whilst feeding the wains and maintaining much the same lifestyle I currently have - my needs are so modest of course)... None of the 'just enough' cash would change me though - I'd still be the same morally frail occasionally good sometimes bad person I am currently (or would I? - therein lies the rub).
ReplyDelete"Too much" (we can debate where we fix the 'too much' line at) money doesn't stop people being weak, venal, self-serving, miserable - but it seems to me that it opens doors of corruption and influence and manipulation that 'just enough' or 'too little' never could.
Wow, no winners there. And a profusion of speculation. All I can usefully add is that he may have suffered a frontal lobe injury in the accident - this kind of head injury often causes complete personality changes and the type of (often sexualised) disinhibition you describe.
ReplyDeleteI've worked with a few patients who have been trying to cope with partners or adult children who were previously the most gentle and benign individuals, but are rendered almost psychologically unrecognisable after this kind of injury. It can be a living hell for everyone concerned. And as yet, there's no cure. Damn right that money can't buy you everything.
There was a lot of talk about him putting on to avoid responsibility for what happened but, some of his behavior...the pictures and all that...was so wacky I think what you're talking about is more likely.
DeleteAs far as I know...before all this, he liked his liqour and was maybe kind of a bore but deranged.
But NOT deranged
DeleteIt's great. We can now completely wreck the flow of comments but, still can't edit them.
My mate gary was beaten up when he was 16, and he hit his head at some point, and he doesn't remember anything before, and his personality completly changed. He harbours quite a lot of anger to some unknown people out there, and has suffered depression for a lotta years. Brains are funny old things.
DeleteOne thing I should have pointed out is that a lot of people cash pay checks because of the Irbys and they haven't been stingy with their money.
ReplyDeleteI think money's a moral neutral and people are what they are. In this case, the money just provided Stuart more opportunity to make a mess of himself (or the self that was left after the brain damage) but, couldn't do anything about the increasing misery those opportunities created.
I'm not uncomfortable or unhappy in our current situation...I'm very thankful for that but, don't hold yer breath waiting for somebody to come up with a figure that would be too big for me to take. :)
Money is a double edged sword. To little and your life is hard beyond the normal experience. To much and your grip on reality is at best tainted. Money and power corrupt. That does not always mean that the damage to others, quite often it is to oneself. I have experienced both having money and having none. Money hid my illness but it did not protect me from what happened.
ReplyDeleteHad I been poor would my illness have been picked up earlier. Thats the million dollar question ... (yes pun intended )
If you had made a nuisance of yourself to rich people it probably would have. So, I guess it's a philosophical point or a wash.
ReplyDelete:)
So true so true. :)
DeleteMoney is the colder of the moral neutrals. But the difference between someone with no debt to service and a lot of debt to service is the difference between being free and being indentured, and the difference between someone without debt and a creditor is the difference between a man and a boss. And not everybody makes a good boss.
ReplyDeleteThat's an interesting point considering the monsterous debt this country is wracking up and what it could mean for the next couple of generations that had nothing to do with accruing it.
ReplyDeletePublic debt went really nuts in the US almost 30 years ago when military spending shot up as taxes went down. The debt's higher now, but even with the crappy economy of the last few years I don't know if it's higher proportionately to GDP than it was then.
ReplyDeleteAnyways, I really question how important public debt is in a country like the US. When an economy like Argentina's can more or less default on their debt without serious long-term consequences, I can't really see the US suddenly turning into an economic pariah if the government stopped servicing its debts, or world-shaking fusses being kicked up if the US insisted on some sort of ridiculously favourable servicing plan. It's too important a market for too many things.
I'm afraid we are heading toward unchartered territory on debt to GDP.
ReplyDeleteThe s and p down grade predicted an upside scenario of 74% at the end of 2011 to 78% by 2021 and a downside from 74% to 101% by 2021. We briefly busted the 100 mark not too long ago.
Those numbers are based on certain things happening like tax increases, projected annual increases in GDP and assumptions about policy results.
We haven't seen this since the end of WWII...and our situation is totally different now. Entitlement spending is the real ball buster here. Those checks "have" to go out.
Then there's China...our lender of choice. I think to an extent they need us as much as we need them...to an extent.
I'm not an alarmist...I don't think it's time to buy seeds just yet but, we have a problem. I worry that it will be dealt with...let's say...unimaginatively. With taxes or inflation.
Economic reasoning says the down cycle has to end some time. Here in Aussie we have huge tax receipts from mining and selling our mineral wealth all over the world, including china and most emerging countries. We don't have the sovereign debt issues you have but we are all worried about where to from here.
ReplyDeleteReality says to stimulate an economy government pump primes it with cash usually spent on infrastructure and renewal. If your in debt you go in debt further with the hope that the injection of funds kick starts the economy. Problems arise however when it doesn't. The jury is still out right now as to the current real state of play.
Scary days ahead but have faith. In the end it will sort itself out, just how long is the question
Surely government spending (shifting money around...sometimes from Peter to Paul...I see this every day with food stamp spending and contract pricing on goods) is not the only way to stimulate an economy.
ReplyDeleteThe downturn where I am is not nearly as sharp as in other places...we don't get huge spikes or dips but monetary policy isn't a local issue.
Governments can foster economic growth through tossing around money (judiciously) or else by taking trade measures that are extremely protective of their domestic economy (and what the US is allowed to do in those terms is now much more limited than it once was).
ReplyDeleteGetting away from pure disbursements in terms of throwing money around, there's always state capitalism. The Economist has a good series this week about state capitalism: http://www.economist.com/node/21542931.
My personal suspicion is that if the global economic system is going to last in something like a recognizable form, the world will turn into something like Singapore.
But in Singapore, they actually put you in prison for corruption, instead of enshrining it into super PACs. The world (economically) turning into Singapore isn't the most optimistic thought ever, but even so it's possibly over-optimistic . . . .
I know a lot of people that have been salivating for just that.
ReplyDeleteWho knows.