Does it break your heart that Khloe Kardashian sold her house for a mere $5.49 million? Or that her net worth of $20 million allows her to purchase a new home for $7.2 million?
What is heartbreaking about this is that half of those figures could put underprivileged children through college, feed hungry ones for probably decades, provide housing (let’s stress, ‘reasonable’ housing) for the homeless, and Khloe would never miss it.
Living in her world must be complicated. She tweets, “May your days be painted in gold. May your life be filled with diamonds. May the stars shine bright on your world. May your new year have more magic and spark that the last. May God continue to bless you in abundance!” Must be something like living at Disney World…at best, it’s far from what the average American contends with on a daily basis.
Where are the priorities of these people? I know they must realize that they are not typical, but do they ever look at the homeless on the streets of L.A. or watch the news when disaster strikes in cities all over the world, all the while knowing that they have the means to alleviate some of this suffering, and yet, for the most part, they do nothing…
I’d like think that if I had $20 million dollars, I would be a benefactor to those who have tried all of their lives to work hard, only to be faced with life-threatening illnesses that leave them destitute, to ensure that homeless people have options, that orphans have the love and human kindness that we all deserve, to make the world better in some way for my having walked here…
But in reality, who knows. Maybe that kind of money causes some kind of complications, like hypnosis, or blindness to the plight of our fellow man. Maybe it hardens the heart while earning interest at a magnitude that boggles the mind. Even so, at some point they must come to terms with what is real, and what is not. What is true and what is a façade painted in dollar signs. What life is like for people with handicaps, with heartaches, with hardships not of their own making…
There are so many loving and giving people in and around Cullman, and all over the U.S. who give generously of what they have, although they are not considered ‘rich’ – those people who have come face to face with disease and disaster and want to do something about it.
According to Forbes, the highest paid celebrities are:
Taylor Swift, who was named the world’s highest paid celebrity, having earned more than $470 million (36 percent which came from 2016 alone) in the past six years.
The highest paid all-male group, One Direction, took home $110 million in pretax earnings over the past year.
According to Celebrity Net Worth, Oprah Winfrey is still the wealthiest celeb.
Part of Oprah’s $275 million does go toward charities, I’m sure, as well as the other celebs’ mentioned, but the point is, if they gave half of it away, they would still be incredibly wealthy, and probably feel better about themselves in the bargain.
But my hat really goes off to Tom Hanks, the host of an upcoming television special dedicated to finding a cure for cancer. Hanks supports this cause wholeheartedly because of his wife, Rita Wilson’s, battle with breast cancer last year. Due to that experience, Hanks has joined forces with Sean Parker, the billionaire techie who is best known for being the brains behind Napster, and as the first president of Facebook, who has invested $250 million in an effort to bring together scientists and doctors from the top six academic cancer centers to break down the bureaucracy many people believe has caused the stalemate in treating and potentially finding a cure for several of the deadly forms of the disease.
Parker is quoted by the Hollywood Reporter as saying that it was frustrating for him to witness so much money going to cancer research but not being allocated to next generation therapies. “It wasn’t going to immunotherapy.”
That’s what I’m talking about. People who do something with their ‘extra’ money, instead of just taking vacations and buying houses that they get lost in, let’s all do whatever we can to help these people to help the world. Everyone isn’t a millionaire, but everyone can do something to help, even if it’s just writing a letter of support to those who want to change things for the better, or volunteering time to help someone less fortunate.
There are a whole host of local organizations who are dedicated to doing just that. Watch your local papers for schedules of their events, or contact the local United Way for lists of such worthwhile organizations and agencies.
