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January 04, 2009

The acid-test for the idealistic liberal

A guy who won a $10.5 million lottery in Belgium is giving up to half of it to the poor. He hasn't given it all just yet. But he has already given enough to purchase 264 gallons of fuel to 100 poor families. I'd guess the price of gasoline to be approximately $5 per gallon. So that's about $130k that he's given away so far.

Would you do the same if you won? Are you sure?

Here in Oregon we remember the much ballyhooed state tax kicker checks which so many didn't get. I was one of those who didn't get a kicker check because I'd marked the box on my tax forms stating that any kicker could be given to the schools.

That was an easy enough choice to make a year ago when nobody had received a kicker check for a number of years... it was all an abstract exercise. I honestly didn't expect there to be a kicker check and so it was pretty easy to give away money that I didn't expect to materialize. But I gotta tell you that I was less... um... enthusiastic when I received notification that the roughly $650 worth of kicker that I would otherwise have been entitled to had been donated to schools... per my choice.

Now, I'd like to think that I'd be a lot more willing to part with cash in hand if it were only a portion of such an enormous amount and I'd be guaranteed to be fabulously wealthy even with the generosity. But after the kicker experience I'm less sure. I like to think of myself as a very giving kind of guy. But I'm pretty sure that I could spend $10.5 million all on my own.

Posted by Kevin at January 4, 2009 06:02 PM