Mathematics and Class Systems

So, Baz and I were in a car heading to get our taxes done. The sun was shining, cool wind in our hair, warm smell of colitas, rising up through the air. And we suddenly realized where we stood in the long line of personal finances. Although we'd both like to say we didn't, I think we both veer towards the lower side of it all. Perhaps not lowest. We can afford an apartment and the luxury of daily peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, but relatively speaking when you look up the top of this totem pole and see people like Billy Gates with $48,000,000,000 you get a little frustrated and, naturally, frustration leads to mathematics and, in many cases, mishandled mathematics. Immersed in this rage, numbers and decimal points spewed out of our mouths and, almost at the same time, we realized ( like Russell Crowe in A Beautiful Mind ), painted in the sky was the answer:

If Bill Gates gave everyone in this great nation (all 293,027,571 of us) a million dollars....we'd all be millionares and he'd still be the richest. Problem solved. No poverty. No sadness. And everyone gets a Ferrari!

The excitement of this discovery was overwhelming. Baz, grabbed the wheel and turned the car over the median into oncoming traffic. Horns blared, but we didn't care and if we'd told the owner's of those horns that we were on our way to make them and everyone they knew and loved rich (assuming they only knew and loved Americans), I'm sure they wouldn't have cared either. In fact, all of Lake Shore Drive may have cleared for us.

The horns long behind us, we sprinted into the house, rushed some handwriting (there was no time for good penmahsip-not if we all wanted to be millionaires by tomorrow) and headed to the post office to overnight our proposal to Mr. Gates. It was when we arrived at the post office that a gushing breeze of clarity finally cleansed our rage-worn minds.


$48,000,000,000.00

-

( 293,027,571 x $1,000,000.00 )

=

-$292,979,571,000,000.00

Yep, that's right. Our rushed mathematics had lost Mr. Gates all his fortune and actually put him in the hole $292,979,571,000,000.00!! Oops. Well, with that abominable mathematical experience behind us, I have come up with a far simpler equation:
The Bill Gates Fortune - $20.50 = a bus pass and a banana for me (I could use the potassium)