This is a serious question asked in all sincerity.
I would like to know how many people really yearn for a billion dollars.
There are many entrepreneurs out there who are rapidly racking up major fortunes, more money than they know what to do with.
Do you wish you were one of them? I guess the knee jerk reaction is to say "Yes please!" Nobody would turn away the opportunity of lifetime financial security for themselves and their families and enough funds to buy whatever they wanted.
But to be honest, you could do this with half a billion.
Surely, $500,000,000 would be enough security and enough funds to buy all the things that you could possible dream of owning.
What about $100,000,000? A one followed by eight zeros is a substantial amount of money.
Most families couldn´t even spend the interest.
In fact I believe, and please correct me if I am wrong, but most readers of this article would say that $10,000,000 was more than sufficient to satisfy all their dreams, and a substantial proportion would even say "stick" at $5,000,000! What I am really doing here is testing your greed level.
Consider the greed level, for example, of someone who is not even prepared to say "Enough!" at a billion.
This eminent member of our species stays awake at night worrying, not about how he is going to pay his next bill, but about why he is making less than the other thousand or so individuals in the world who make more than him.
Greed is ultimately insatiable.
It is about making money your reason for living.
It is about not really caring if there are millions in the world who cannot afford to feed themselves, or who cannot afford healthcare.
It is about such a high level of personal insecurity that no amount of financial security can ever put it right.
We hear a lot about people who smoke or get drunk every night to make their lives more bearable, but please remember those whose only way of finding meaning is to soak up the world´s resources until they have more than anyone else on the planet.
Some of them are in denial and say it is not about the money.
How sad.
Surely there ought to be a recovery programme set up at once to deal with these poor obsessives?