May Day

When I grew up, we usually looked to June for graduation, especially high school and college. Today May seems to be the month for graduation. It is also a month of anticipation of the job of our dreams, or even a job of any kind. We are informed that high school graduation means better pay, college and university even better, and grad school; well, maybe more, maybe not.

Forbes put out it's Special Edition and this year it included 1,645 Billionaires. Now, a billion is a lot of money, usually merely a reverie for most of us. Even so, out of some seven billion people on the earth, 1,645 is a relatively low percentage and not too many of us are acquainted with them. Forbes obliges us with an introduction to several billionaires in its special issue so we can get better acquainted.

I won't even try to to explain how much a billion is but let's look at some billionaires in the world. How this is determined beats me but that's Forbes domain. The oldest is 98; youngest, 24. The most: U.S. 492. Twenty-three have made the Forbes listing every year since 1987. Bachelors, 46; the one with the most children: Sulaiman Al Rajhi with 24. Imagine, there were only 140 billionaires in 1987.

The big question is not so much what this wealth does to the individual(s) but what is done with all this money. The top four counties with the most billionaires are the U.S., China, Russia and Germany (p.44, March 24, 2014).

My senior moment arrived as I struggled with these 492 Americans (U.S.) and their fortunes. Keeping up with inflation, weathering the ups and downs of the markets, smiling at the mendicants looking for charities for themselves or their causes, establishing foolproof wills and trusts, settling with Uncle Sam in April, covering losses and upping the ante, sizing up worthy causes, investing and divesting, owning and disowning. As I brooded over this, I realized that not only will I never be a billionaire, I couldn't even think like one, act like one, much less advise one.

When I realized that last category, I relaxed, put Forbes aside, and sighed with relief. And I thought, how much better it is that they have this opportunity to enrich the pages of Forbes as well as innumerable, often unimagined ways to share their ideas, skills and even some of their fortune without any of my suggestions. They are lucky, or should I say, fortunate, that I mind my own business, sometimes a bit better than I deserve.