When next you see me, I may be filthy rich. That’s right. Thanks to my generous brother-in-law who brought home a couple of lottery tickets from our southern neighbour, we could be rolling in the dough.
One of the tickets is estimated to have a prize of $200 million or so and the other a whopping $440-million plus. I don’t know about you, but I can’t begin to fathom that much money. I’m pretty sure a lot of people would be anxious to tell me if the big win came to pass.
I actually have to laugh at myself when I think about how lotteries have changed my attitude to money. If the B.C./Canadian prize is less than $20 million, I can’t be bothered to buy a ticket. Ho hum, I think, not worth paying the voluntary tax for. In reality, if someone gave me $1,000, I’d probably die of shock. (All you wealthy people out there with past axes to grind, now is the chance to be rid of me forever.)
On the serious side of the money equation are the people who depend on you and me paying our taxes so they can exist well below the poverty line. It seems no matter how wealthy we keep hearing our province is, we still find it necessary to claw back pension increases from the folks who can least afford it. I hang my head in shame to read about disabled artists who can’t afford to ride a bus to get to art courses – the one thing in life that still brings them pleasure. And for those of you who think it’s their due, imagine what it would be like to overcome profound physical limits to go to university and work as long as you’re able, only to have our senior governments stick their hands in your pockets whenever one of them gives you a pension raise.
Some of us are very lucky. We’ve managed to have decent jobs with pension plans so when we retire we’re not solely dependent on society to make sure we don’t starve to death. We can afford to do the things in life that bring us pleasure.
Many of us work hard to bring about a better world, whether through our donations or volunteer work (or both). For the rest of us, all we do is grudgingly pay the taxes necessary to keep our country afloat.
While I’ll be happy to collect my big winnings from the grand old U.S.A., I think I’ll stay put. And the first thing I’ll do is pay those bus passes our province can’t afford. Keep your fingers crossed for me.
