Fogg’s Horn

The Miscreant Meanderings Of Our Man Markus

Content to be a Thousandaire

These days it’s tough to avoid stories about billionaires. Some Russian billionaire has a yacht the size of a cruise ship. OK, half the size of a cruise ship. I Googled its length versus that of the Cunard Queen Mary 2, my ride across the Atlantic multiple times. But the Russian’s ship has two helipads: the QM2 only one. What’s next, air traffic control for helicopter congestion above the damned boat?

I am a lifelong thousandaire. Recently I was wondering what manner of deprivations I must have suffered living my life two levels below a billionaire. I’ve certainly not suffered any lack of diversity in my travels. I’ve been a passenger on everything from puddle-jumpers in Central America to sipping cocktails in the first class lounge upstairs on a transcon 747. I’ve stayed in huts and hotel suites; eaten in hamburger joints, had fish around a campfire with Fiji firewalkers and dined on ridiculously delicious dinners served by white-gloved waiters in five star restaurants in world capitals. I’ve had polo lessons from a ninegoal player in the Dominican Republic, learned to scuba the reefs in the British Virgin Islands, set foot on Antarctica and could literally feel the vibrations in shafts of light coming directly from Heaven in a glittering ice cave in Iceland . . . among many, many experiences that cost mere hundreds or sometimes some thousands of dollars. Nothing requiring the kind of money a billionaire can boast.

In fact that’s it, I’ve been told: it’s all about bragging rights. A game I don’t understand. I want to be a billionaire so I can lord it over lesser billionaires or peasant millionaires? I’m still stuck on the missing bennies thing. We have a billionaire (allegedly) ex-president who apparently spends all day watching TV and eating junk food, playing an occasional game of golf and popping into the dining room at his estate to the accolades of well-wishers. I am trying to understand trading my thousandaire lifestyle for that one.

OK, I’ve not been launched aboard a rocket into space for an incomparable view of our planet, and that would be worth the trip if it were available to thousandaires, but for now I’ll just revel in the glorious photos taken by real astronauts.

I’ve done some googling to understand the context of what it means to be a billionaire. Well, why hold back, to be the numero uno billionaire, Elon Musk. His wealth is estimated at $302 billion. If he were a country, he’d be ranked 41st in terms of GDP, ahead of 154 countries, just below Pakistan and just above Chile. If he were company, he’d be 29th, bigger than Toyota, Coca Cola and Disney based on market cap. (The fact that Tesla is No. 6 is helpful to his

ranking.) Numero dos, Jeff Bezos, at a mere $172 billion, would be all the way down at 53, just short of Iraq and above Algeria; tied with AT&T for 66th place among wealthiest companies, ahead of T-Mobile, UPS and Morgan Stanley.

So, I ask myself, would the Cliffs of Moher on the Irish coast look any better to those guys than they did to me? Would the Catedral de Sevilla? Would the spectacle of all those Egyptian soldiers and animals marching across the stage to the glorious music of Verdi’s “Aida” be any more spectacular or sound any better to them? Would the impressionist artwork at the Musée d'Orsay in Paris be any more inspirational? Or dinner at Le Grand Venise later that evening taste any better?

A story in The New York Times reported that Bezos’s ex-wife, MacKenzie Scott, is the one giving away the lion’s share of Bezos billions. Whenever the question is posed among us thousandaires as to what we would do if we were billionaires, the answer invariably gets around the MacKenzie Scott model. That would be my answer as well, but I’d prefer to never be able to pile up that kind of wealth in the first place, hoping that it would have been distributed far more equitably before it ever got to me.

Oh well, I’m off on another thousandaire adventure and hopefully a column filled with subject matter far more entertaining in the next issue of this magazine.

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Two from Natural Traveler Books Available on Amazon.Com