Is anyone worth spending $100 million dollars a year on?

[tekla]

A friend of mine sent me some numbers and asked me just to play with them and see if I could find any thing interesting - cause I'm pretty boring and I do stuff like that.  They were numbers of Michael Jackson's lifetime earnings and debt.  Pretty interesting.

Given the length of his life, Michael Jackson spend $25 million dollars every year on himself.  But, since his early life was spend in poverty, and the real money didn't hit till he was 20 or so, if you tail weight the numbers you find that during the last few decades of his life (a time in which he didn't do anything really - like when was his last real hit, his last real tour) he was spending $100 million dollars a year on being Michael Jackson, most of it borrowed (I know, you and I have a hard time getting  people to loan us ten thou, he got loans of anywhere from 5-8 hundred MILLION dollars.)

So, was it worth it?  Should it have even been allowed to happen.  Couldn't he have just lived on a few million a year and still been pretty weird doing nothing?  Didn't we as a society have something better to spend that money on?

[Genevieve Swann]

That money could have fed educated and housed every underprivlleged child in Honduras. They could have lived like kings.
Post Merge: June 30, 2009, 09:58:20 AM
Any normal person would think that M.J. having grown up the first few years himself underprivileged would have some compassion.

[lisagurl]

The system has flaws. But supporting more life has drawbacks also. People make more people something the earth can not support no matter how much money their is.

[Mister]

$100 million a year?  That's $11k a minute, 24/7/365.

[lizbeth]

So, was it worth it?  Should it have even been allowed to happen.

is this like a subtle way of saying that Michael Jackson was 'too big to fail'

I keed, I keed, but in a capitalist system you have to have the super rich and the super poor (more like several of the super poor supporting the super rich, but I digress).

That money could have fed educated and housed every underprivlleged child in Honduras. They could have lived like kings.
Any normal person would think that M.J. having grown up the first few years himself underprivileged would have some compassion.

first of all, you might want to look into who set the guinness record for "Most Charities Supported By a Pop Star" before we start calling MJ greedy.

eccentric, yes. greedy, no.

but if we really get down to it, I think the posters in this thread alone could have fed, educated and housed every child in hondouras. that's just a speck on the map of world wide poverty and it really doesn't take much money to help. unfortunately there isn't any profit in generosity so the system will never really allow it to work.

[tekla]

Look, I'm not into 'I could do X with that much money' cause i'm not sure that money existed without him.  However, when, once upon a time I postulated such a point someone told me: "So you think Jerry would have played like that for only a million a year?"  And my response then, as it is now, is: Would he have rather been a plumber for $30K?"

[heatherrose]

"So you think Jerry would have played like that for only a million a year?"
And my response then, as it is now, is: Would he have rather been a plumber for $30K?"

At one time he was willing to play for less than the price of a meal.

[tekla]

Less than that if I recall right.  But them years are pretty hazy.  It's not like we had a huge appetite at any rate.

[NicholeW.]

Less than that if I recall right.  But them years are pretty hazy.  It's not like we had a huge appetite at any rate.

Well ... not for the big bucks perhaps, but surely there were a couple of things that might be listed as appetites, eh? Music being one of them?

[tekla]

My music habit never came close to $100 million a year.  For that I could have had Eric sing ballades to me, Jerry play solos for me while Mick and Keith blew me.