Sowell says

It doesn’t matter what rights you have under the Constitution of the United States, if the government can punish you for exercising those rights. And it doesn’t matter what limits the Constitution puts on government officials’ power, if they can exceed those limits without any…

— Thomas Sowell Quotes (@ThomasSowell) May 30, 2024

Woman of the day

Woman of the Day nurse Mary Helen Young born OTD 1883 in Aberdeen, murdered in Ravensbrück in 1945 for her work with the French Resistance during WW2, for lending her apartment in Paris as a base for an illegal radio transmitter to help Allied servicemen to escape Occupied… pic.twitter.com/SF2LEYkLEN

— The Attagirls (@TheAttagirls) June 5, 2024

 

Could you do good with $50m?

When Lotto first started a columnist wrote about nearly having enough of the right numbers to win the $1million prize and being relieved when she found out she was one number short.

Back then $1 million was worth a lot more than it is now but even so, had the winner not known what to do with her winnings there were numerous very worthy causes that could have put the money to very good news.

More than 30 years on from the first draw, prizes are often worth a lot more than $1 million. Tonight’s is a big one – $50 million – and must be won. That’s encouraging many more people to buy tickets than usual even though the extra buyers reduces the already slim chances of winning to tiny.

It might be won by a single ticket but even if if the prize is shared it will be more than most people will ever have.

A big win would be life changing but not always in a positive way. A large amount of money has caused more problems than it’s solved for some people and some previous winners of large amounts of money have finished with less than they started.

That’s sad, and reinforces the theory that if all the wealth in the world was distributed equally, it would only take weeks until there was a bell curve of its distribution with a few having a little, a few having a lot and most somewhere in between.

If you won tonight, what would you do with it and could you do good?

If I won, I’d share most of it, enjoy a little and use the rest to make some more.

The bulk of the sharing would go to ovarian cancer research, the enjoying would include family and friends, and the making some more would involve farming.

Although, that reminds me of the joke about an old farmer being asked what he’d do if he won Lotto. He replied, he’d just carry on farming until it was all used up.