Economy: Solved!

Soulja Boy has evidently
never heard of Expedia.com

There is officially such a thing as too rich. Behold Soulja Boy who may, or may not have spent $55 million* on a private jet with optional flatscreens and 4 wet bars. Is it even possible to spend that much on a jet? And how many wet bars do you need on a plane that seats like 12 people? Is there one for the pilot? 55 million dollars? Seriously? It's not that I have an opinion of him as an artist or anything, but if he did somehow blow that much on a plane, he'd totally deserve a punch in the Chinese character for 'conspicuous consumption' (see face, right).

This JPEG of Ray Irani alone is
worth $2.4 million.

Ok, so while Soulja Boy is probably full of shit, this guy definitely has too much money. His name's Ray Irani and he made $76 million at an oil company last year. Over the last 10 years he made $857 million. Am I a total pinko for saying that no one should make that much when gas costs $4 a gallon? I don't care how good this guy is at oil-company CEO-ing, there is someone, somewhere (probably working under him) who is better at it than he. The difference is that they're not making more money than the island nation of Tuvalu.

I'm not alone on this, am I? Millions of us don't even have one wet bar on our private jets, or health insurance for that matter. Meanwhile, there are people out there with yachts like this one:

Although in fairness, this yacht is surprisingly eco-friendly. 

Instead of diesel, it runs on panda blood and the tears of childhood-cancer patients.

We are so going after this son of a bitch.

Aren't we, as a planet, sort of teetering on the edge of economic calamity? If things keep going the way they're going and these jackasses continue to flaunt their offensively vast wealth, how long before we have another Bastille Day? That's not to say that I'm against the idea of turning some of these people upside down and plugging the deficit with whatever falls out of their pockets, but sooner or later we're going to have to fix the problem. Fortunetly, thanks to video games, I think I've hit upon the solution.

"Money fight!"

-C. Montgomery Burns

I'm not an economist (I know, right?) and I don't fully understand how the global economy works, but I think we all need to remember that money is kind of imaginary when you get right down to it. It's only worth something because we pretend it is. The government prints it so we don't have to barter goats and children and stuff, not so a few dozen kagillionaires can wallow in extravagance. It's like Monopoly, if someone has all the money it's not fun anymore. You stop playing. 

There's so much the Orcs can teach us.

So what's my idea? Level caps. Like in World of Warcraft, you know? For those with lives, level caps keep players from becoming too powerful. Without level caps your level infinity Night Elf Warlock would blow through each new expansion pack in about fifteen minutes, you'd lose interest and then Blizzard would have to come up with some other way to get your $14.99 a month. Or, I don't know, maybe they could release Diablo III sometime this decade. 

So why doesn't real life have something like this? What if the most anyone was allowed to accumulate was, I don't know, 20 million dollars. And anything beyond that goes in a big kitty to help pay off national debt or universal healthcare or something.

Or one of these. America could use one of these.

Before you say that $20 million isn't
enough, remember you get a crown too.

That's enough, right? $20 million and that's it, you win. Congratulations. You don't get to have any more money, but you get a crown or a sash or something and you get to live out the rest of your life as the guy who won at life. I'm not suggesting that we throw out capitalism, I'm just suggesting that there could be a limit on how much money a person should be allowed to hoard. Is that so crazy?

*To put this in perspective, which clearly Soulja Boy has not, $55 million is roughly equivalent to the average income of 1,100 people, 687 college educations* or 275 rides on the space plane. Yeah, I looked it up. The more you know!