If you had 500 million dollars in your possession (legally)

[Hawkeye-X]

What would you do with it.. General, politics, stock investment, etc.

Be creative!

[bullimiami]

1. i would be so uncreative.

i would take care of my family and invest in real estate.
from there it would be about helping those less fortunate.

[Dirty Hippie]

2. Animal Rescue

They deserve help. Sometimes I think we humans don't.

[Angry Girl]

19. Nice Bush graphic! May I steal it?

URGENT! Timing is critical to save earthquake victims before winter!

[JI7]

3. travel

see the world.

[Tace]

4. I'd Fund A Progressive News Service

With a text and image wire service, and radio and TV news networks.

[TallahasseeGrannie]

5. Quit work, invest

build a family compound, form foundations to help individual homeless families get on their feet.

[soothsayer]

6. Buy a house, gift a bunch to my sis, bro, mom, and them mom and

I start our nationwide casino crawl. If there's anything left, plenty to donate to charities that pull at my heartstrings.

[sinkingfeeling]

7. I would finish the restoration of my house & landscape , using up

about $150,000. Invest some for retirement. Give to the hundreds of causes that ask for my donations, to which I can only give a few bucks to about a fifth of them now. Guess I would spent a couple of thousand to have dinner with Bill Clinton and some other politicians.

[porphyrian]

8. Buy a suburban community, restore it to wilderness.

I would also like to find a way to revitalize urban communities without exporting all the cash or making it too expensive for the locals to live there.

[tk2kewl]

9. set up some investments to ensure my financial security...

build myself a completely off-the-grid house someplace nice and then begin meeting with environmental orgs and human rights orgs to setup block grants for groups doing work that i find important -- maybe get myself a spot on one or more of their boards

[RaleighNCDUer]

10. Produce the movie script I've been working/thinking about.

Live off of 1 million. Spend the remaining 474 million on poverty/disease relief.

[Me.]

11. Vaccinate All The Kids In Africa

Feed the hungry ones here

[HereSince1628]

12. I'd buy a small to medium sized private college

and see how an organizational structure based on the partnership system of large law practices compares in efficiency and efficacy compared to the prevailing top down factory model.

[napi21]

13. I'd invest almost all of it, and use the profits to help some of the

most needy people, plus support some good Dem candidats so we can get back to being proud of American again!

[Chicago Democrat]

14. FUND DEMOCRATS!!!!!!! then fund Marxists!!!

Then Fund more Democrats!!!


Then Fund MoRE DEMOCRATS@!!!!


THEN START 527's like Move ON for A THOUSAND ISSUES from Universal Health Care to Progressive Taxation to Educational Parity!


Then I would get some Chinese food and a massuer.

[Imagevision]

15. Go home...that would be nice

[BurgherHoldtheLies]

16. Feed the DU Grovelbot

:D

[B Calm]

17. During winter, move to the South Pacfic and have my bare butt swatted

with palm leaves by half naked hula girls.. Summer time I would be living in my log home in the Canadian wilderness...

[Mutley]

18. Not too creative...

Hook up my family and friends, get myself a house and a few cars, maybe a helicopter (I always thought it would be the coolest thing to have my own helicopter), travel, invest enough so I can live off the interest, then donate the rest to various charities that I love but rarely have the money to donate to.

[dkofos]

20. Buy the presidency

[B Calm]

22. Any man who wants to be president is either an egomaniac or crazy.

Dwight D. Eisenhower

[400Years]

21. buy up radio stations, etc.

[Oceansaway]

23. Order an X-tra large Pizza.......

and then start a list of 499 charitys,friends and relatives that could each 'use' a million........

[slackmaster]

24. Two chicks at the same time

And I'd order pizza, delivered.

[lakeguy]

25. i would buy some land with a lake in the middle. then i'd build a small,

sustainable community where any of my relatives and friends could live if they wanted to.

[melissinha]

26. I'd invest in alternative fuel production company

among many other philanthropic endeavors....

OOOO I could get the brother-in-law to be my lawyer and get him away from the oil companies.

[triguy46]

27. Well, after I bought a 911 Turbo...

I'd set up a foundation and start doing some good. Shades of Eliot Rosewater...but without the fire hat.

[eeyore]

28. Invest in a hostile takeover of Clear Channel!

I'd turn Clear Channel into listener supported radio, and do away with all of the payola shit that goes on. The world needs better music and more talk radio choices!

Oh, and all of the Clear Channel billboards would tout progressive propaganda.

[Cleita]

33. I'm with you there and I would definitely try to get control

of one of the cable news channels.

[Speck Tater]

29. Set up a scholarship fund for exceptional grad students in the sciences.

Help those who are having trouble financially to get their PhDs and contribute to the general advancement of the species.

I had to drop out of grad school for lack of funding 40 years ago. I've regretted it ever scince.

[BigBearJohn]

30. Can I be your best friend?

(grin)

[Historic NY]

31. I'd finish a few uncompleted projects at some local & national........

historic sites. Build a (local)library for my community that focused on regional history. Buy a couple of new/old cars I've wanted. Finish some work on my house & yard. I then would become that annoymous donor for national or worldwide causes that have an immediate effect peoples lives or conditions.

[EstimatedProphet]

32. Invest heavily in truly liberal media outlets

[schmuls]

34. Pay off debts, remodel my house, have fun and use the

remainder promoting rights for animals

[ComerPerro]

35. Get married to my girlfriend, buy a house, retire my parents

and just give money to people I know as they need it.

Gifts.

[TahitiNut]

36. Scholarships, legal aid, housing, health care clinics.

I'd focus on scholarships for single parents and other young adults that don't fit the 'cookie cutter' criteria. I'd offer graduate scholarhips in law or medicine in return for a "pay it forward" agreement. I'd set up legal aid for minimum wage employees and disadvantaged, specializing in employment law and torts. I'd establish subsidized housing in middle class neighborhoods. I'd open health care clinics in 'borderline' communities that doubled as job-training for paraprofessionals. I'd fund several food/shelter operations in accessible locations for the homeless and abused, using an established organization the does such things on a secular basis.

I hope I wouldn't spend much on myself since I'm wary of the addiction to material 'happiness' (which requires ever-increasing 'fixes').

[MsTryska]

37. ahh....so you want to know my lottery plan.....

well - I would invest almost all of it in an interest bearing account of some sort - i'm aiming for 5%-ish.

that should give me a nice salary to live off of in interest alone.

I would build a family compound so that my folks can be taken care of.

and then I would start getting heavily active in politics - especially funding the machine. I would also set up a charitable foundation of some sort. still haven't figured out what exactly.

[MadHound]

38. Easy enough

Set aside a few million, five or six, in a trust and live off of the interest generated from that. Take the rest of the millions, put them into an interest bearing trust fund, and give the interest generated away to charities of my choice.

Five or six million is enough for me. I can use one million to finish up my house, pay off my debts, and spend as some euphoric "mad money". And even in a conservative investment plan, four-five million generates around 200,000 a year, more than enough for my tastes.

The interest generated by the remaining amount comes to 22.7 million annually. A person can do a lot of good with that every year. I would probably have a load of fun around Christmas time, just going down into the poorer sections of town and handing out thousand dollar bills and such like.

[MsTryska]

39. wow - that's an even better way of doing it.....

i was thinking to jsut put it all into one account - but splitting them off, and using the interest from each for separate functions is really cool. thanks for the idea!

[MadHound]

40. My wife teaches economics

And we have gone over this scenario in great, sometimes painful detail. But still and all, I love my wife, for it is with traits like these that she perfectly complements myself.

[MsTryska]

41. well she's brilliant.

i've been gnawing on this for a bit figuring out how i could do what i want, without biting into my capital with each contribution...

[mwooldri]

42. Get housing for veterans.

There's too many homeless veterans of various wars. Hate for it to be a charity but if done as a proper social housing scheme it could fund itself, and even buy new homes for more veterans. Veterans who could afford to pay some rent would pay rent (could work in conjunction with Section 8 - they pay some, the fed government pays some also and helps fund housing repairs and future development).

[jmowreader]

43. $500 million is enough to fuck me some Chinese sweatshops

I figure that one of the main reasons an American company can't compete with a Chinese sweatshop is that, in addition to paying for labor, utilities, insurance and so on, they're also paying principal and interest on their facilities.

Take the $500 million and split it down the middle. One half of that goes into the safest investments you can possibly find--some long-term plays, some short-term. This is your self-insurance fund. With it you're not sending megabucks to some faceless corporation in Connecticut for your general liability and your casualty insurance. This covers everything except your medical--I think I'd still go with a regular insurance company for that.

Divide the other $250 into four chunks. One will go into paying for two brand-new, gleaming factories in different communities that are filled with the best equipment money can buy. Two of the chunks are reserve capital, and the rest gets spent to hire people, train them, improve infrastructure around the factories, buy raw materials and otherwise get the company running.

As your factories start to make money because you're making good products in the US, you put half of the profits into the self-insurance fund and split the other half the same way you split your seed money. As you can afford to do it, add more factories and expand your product line.

I would run my company on a few basic principles:

Principle 1: Employ only Americans.
Principle 2: Produce only the best quality merchandise it's possible to make.
Principle 3: Operate with sustainability in mind.
Principle 4: Never, ever sell to Wal-Mart. And let people know why: at our company, we do not associate with people like that.

What should we make? I'm thinking housewares. Make good, durable products in America that cost about the same as the throwaway crap Wal-Mart buys from China, and people will buy them.

[Yupster]

44. I'd do the same thing all the other rich families do

set up a family trust fund so that each kid born of my progeny can get a monthly check for the rest of their life.

Maybe some of them will be free enough to become senator or presient some day and make a positive difference.