Bequeathing

ELON MUSK, it is extrapolated, will have become the world's first trillionaire by the end of this working day. Rumor has it that he plans to celebrate by putting his dirty, work stained overalls in his washing machine, or taking them to a laundromat, leaving them in the dryer for one of his people to tend to, and repairing to a local pub to stand a few select friends to a round of stout. They're all wealthy, quite. The ultra wealthy tend not to hang out with the unwashed masses,the "hoi polloi". I once mentioned to my father that poor people seem to be more generous than wealthy people, that statistics indicate this, and he agreed "How do you think they got wealthy", he asked, rhetorically. Never lose a friend over a ten dollar bill, he told me. I'm not aware of any charitable foundations underwritten by Musk or for that matter his friend Trump, Surely such things exist. At some point in the eighteen eighties J.D. Rockefeller beame the world's first billionaire. During that time his personal income, from Standard Oil, was estimated to be around one million dollars a day. He was somewhat more generous, and funded education, just as Andrew Carnegie paid for libraries. So did Cornelius Vanderbilt and Leland Stanford, whose eponymous universities bear witness to their philanthropic proclivities. In our present day,, philanthropically, Bill Gates ranks among the best, he having already given away almst all of his formerly vast fortune to various worthy causes. Warren Buffett, who insists tha the has neither the desire nor the intention to establish a legacy in his own name, will bequeath a paltry million dollars or so, maybe less, to each of his children, and donate the rest to charity. Gates and Buffett have teamed up for this purpos, forming the "Bill and Melinda Gates Foudation." My older sister, who has no human children, loves cats and though not especially wealthy is wealthier than I, upper middle class, says that sh eplans to leave her money to the Cornell University School of vetrinary medicine, where ground breaking research is being done, probalby in honor of her beloved bygone pets. (I might suggest another arrangement, but why bother? My house is paid for, I also have no children, I have food on the table, and my cats eat better than I. Sis says that she would love to enjoy the standard of iving of my cats. I decide some years ago to tak eout o reverse mortgage on my house, so I don't have to keep paying the mortgage and can still keep the title in my name. A friend pointed out that this is a complete ripoff. I beg to differ. It would be, if I had children. A recent study revealed that we baby boomers prefer spending our money now, on travel, frivolity, and what not, rather than leaving it to our children. The Gen Exxers, millennials, or whatever generation the scions of baby boomers are, will, it seems, have to get by largely on their own. Wealth and inheritance taxes, so despised by all Americans with any money to speak of, are not currently on the table, but will probably get there within the fairly near future. Goethe said that "We are indeed immortal, made so by the effects of our actions". The atoms which comprise our bodies and brains once circulated through the bloodstream of Julius Caesar. We have existed, in various forms, repeaedly to the point of infinity. Our only true inheritance, ourselves, was forged in the fiery furnaces of dying stars billions of years ago. We, as Carl Sagan said, are star stuff. We have lived as long as the universe has lived, and will die only when the cosmos dies. But it too, we now believe, will be reincarnated, God, for whatever reason, made it hard if not impossible to get rid of anything and everything, including us.