How Much Is Enough?

Robert Greenwald has created a Facebook page asking for answers to, "What would Abbie Hoffman do to stop the Koch brothers?" Hoffman had a terrific sense of guerrilla theater. I don't; but, I can do math and am trying to create imagery and understandable statistics that compare the Koch family to the merely rich. Maybe someone else can find Abbie-Hoffmanesque inspiration from the grotesque size of the Koch family fortune.

Forbes reports Charles and David Koch's combined wealth at $43,000,000,000. How much money is forty-three billion dollars? It is a stack of $100 bills that is 29 miles tall and weighs 474 tons. Moving that much weight would require 18 tractor trailers. The next time you see a truck roll by try to imagine it loaded with $100 bills. Then include another truck and another and another until you have a fleet of eighteen tractor-trailers.

Now, take a standard airline carry-on bag and fill it with fresh, crisp $100 bills. The bag will hold four million dollars, or less than one hundredth of one percent of the Koch family fortune. Yet, $4 million would rank your wealth among the elite top 10% of all Americans. If you invested the money conservatively, you would collect $180,000 every year for the next 50 years and have a million dollars left for your children to inherit. You would not have to work. Just walk to your mailbox and pick up $15,000 every month for 50 years. Thanks to George Bush and his cronies, your money would be taxed at only 15% after one year.

What's that? You're worried about inflation? One-hundred eighty-thousand bucks a year is a lot of money today, but might not be worth much in 50 years. I agree. So, as long as we are playing imagination games, assume that you have ten airline carry-on bags each stuffed with $100 bills. Now, the Koch brothers are only a thousand times wealthier than you are. You may feel poor next to David and Charles, but, you've hit the big time; you get $1,800,000 a year without having to work. Every single day including weekends and holidays someone puts $4,900 into your pockets. Your earnings put you among the top 1% of all Americans. After a half century of high living -- champagne, caviar, first class travel, fast cars, slow horses, your kids in private schools -- you or your heirs will still have $10 million to play with.

Never forget, though, that even with $40 million in the bank, the Kochs make your family look like pikers, poor relations, chumps, schnorers, Beverly Hillbillies, fly specs, and people directed to the servants entrance. Your wealth is Koch brothers rounding error. The stuff they toss to mean-streaked tapioca-brain teabaggers like Scott Walker and Chris Christie.

Ask the question. Not the one about Abbie Hoffman , but the bigger question: How much is enough? The Kochs are not an example of the American dream. Far from it. They have created an American nightmare in which wealth and political paranoia bring all of us down. It is enough to make this Jewish atheist turn to the New Testament, "For the love of money is the root of all kinds of evil." (1 Timothy 6:10)