New Spending

I was at a friend's this weekend and I learned that he and his wife aren't going to build the house they wanted and will stay in the house they've got. He is resigned to this; his wife seems a bit more positive about it.

While I was there I had my lottery fantasies as always. I kept my figure "low" to think about what I could do for nothing. 

If I won five million and the government took half, I'd still have 2.5 million. Over 30 years, that's $83 thousand dollars a year, which is seven thousand dollars a month. If I kept my job (a big if), I could give away six thousand a month.

What I talked to my friend about, and what I would want to do for them, is to build onto their current house until eventually they had built a whole new house next to the old one and could tear the old one down. 

The main things I would want for them are a larger bathroom and bedroom. They survive okay as it is, but their bathroom especially could be expanded. I'd love to just build out one side of their house ten feet, making three of the rooms much larger. 

I'd like to build them a bathroom. A huge, sturdy, luxurious bathroom. Regardless of how the rest of your house is (and theirs is pretty okay), having a good bathroom makes a huge difference. Theirs is "okay" right now, but the shower is majorly cramped. I would want to build a huge, glorious shower that gives you lots of space - heck, it just occurred to me: his parents' retirement home would be a great model; it's got tons of space and three bedrooms and feels like a large home. I bet for them it would be a palace. I wonder how big it is.

Anyway, that's something I'd like to do with lots of money.

The other idea I had while walking from the bus stop was to send teens to Latin America on clean-up missions; have them go and clean up other people's trash, just as Latin Americans are doing here, in so many janitorial positions. (I just thought of that last part; it hadn't occurred to me until now.) 

I go this idea because I was walking home from the bus stop and seeing soda cans thrown in the grass. I should have stopped and picked them up, but I forgot I had bags with me and the people in my house don't recycle (it's maddening), so I'd have nowhere to put them anyway. But in my mind I blamed it on immigrants, because often times they don't have that idea inculcated in them; their struggles have been much more primal, so they haven't had the luxury of separating out recycling. Or maybe they never learned because their societies or towns didn't have recycling services, so everything went into the trash. 

(And I'd like to point out here that I'm well aware that I could be totally wrong and that it could be asshole American teenagers who don't give a shit and just throw their trash in the streets.)

In any case, I've heard talk about trash debacles in other countries, so I'd like to take some Americans and go address that issue. I'd like to take a group of twenty teens every week and send them to a Central American country to clean up some horribly littered area. Every week a group of teenagers going abroad and dealing with trash; on the one hand it gives the locals some sense of foreigners and that they're helping, and on the other hand it shows the Americans what it's like in other places and how lucky they are to have what they do and also that trash is actually a huge problem, even though we like to pretend it isn't. 

Of course, you could probably do this domestically. I don't know where, exactly, but maybe that could be part of the project; having people send in areas to be cleaned up, nominating their town or something.

As usual my thoughts turn to punishment and corrections, that this could/should somehow be a punishment for minor offenders; have kids have to get up close and personal with trash. Here in the DC area, I always thought they should have the upper class white kids have to clean up the "ghetto" areas, as a way to expose them, as a way to humiliate them, and as a way to give the residents a bit of shadenfraude. (Maybe the "mean" joy you feel at seeing others laid low isn't the right sentiment to reward, but it seems like it might feel like a sliver of balance.) 

Speaking of punishments and corrections, it just occurred to me that another diversion program for wayward kids would be to make them assist in a morgue for a day. They're "ballers" who aren't afraid of death? Okay; make them face it, head on, in a totally unglamorous and clinical way. See how they like it then. Put them in the locker room for a half hour or an hour, by themselves, at night. See how tough they are then.

There I go being mean again. I don't know what that's about. Maybe a more effective punishment would be to make them assist the people coming to view and identify the dead; to have them face and deal with extreme emotion for a day. Or sentence them to assist one family of a person - a young person - who has been killed by violence. Have them take that journey with the family, even if it's only for one day. Make them live the consequences.

Ah, I don't know.

With Unlimited Captial

I was walking through Georgetown here in DC the other night, and as I passed an apartment for sale (which was pretty tiny; I saw a realtor showing it the other day), I thought: I'd like to rent this place and give it to a Latin guy who's working as a dishwasher in one of the restaurants down on M Street.

Then I thought: "With unlimited funds, I buy a whole house and install a bunch of immigrants working in the service industry in this part of town. I'd buy a couple houses. If the zoning said single family only, I'd find a big family - with four kids, aunts, uncles, abuelos - and have them all move in. Then they could have guests for weeks or months at a time. Invite people from other countries.

Then I'd replicate the experiment in San Francisco, a place that's been documented as cut off from the working class. I buy a few giants houses and install service employees, and maybe firemen and policemen. I'd show the millionaires how it can be done, and tell the employees' stories to show how the situation is out of wack.

Maybe I'd do it in New York, too. I don't think of it with New York, for some reason. I assume it must be the same there, too, but I don't know it well enough to know, so I can't say. I have another idea for New York, but I'll write that up somewhere else.