I was just idly reading through the Wall Street Journal‘s Weekend Journal, a fine way to start a leisurely weekend morning and one of those niceties of life one cannot enjoy in front of a computer. Come on, folks, buy a newspaper for crying out loud.
In case you missed it, there are a few pages of Distinctive Properties & Estates for sale, and one of them might be just the thing for you. Skipping over the second home suggestions in the Turks and Caicos Islands ($9m and change) or New Zealand (Bay of Islands hotel, price on request) we find a comfy waterfront estate in Boca Raton, majestic views, $17,900,000, or a skier’s dream in Whitefish, MT for a mere $20m… or you might prefer urban living in the Big Apple in any of several condos with views for way under $25m.
I was particularly drawn to a shady Virginia estate overlooking the James River, where I learned to sail and to bum drinks from friendly millionaires (those were the days when a million was real money) sunning on their docks. It has garaging for 5 cars and a children’s stage on the lower level, and you can pick it up for a mere $4.8m, after which your children will no longer have to suffer with makeshift cardboard boxes for their theatricals.
Included in the 30-acre digs of a little piece of Garfield, MN heaven are a caretaker’s bungalow so you won’t have to worry about those professionally landscaped grounds going to pot, plus a couple of guesthouses for your friends who come to play midnight tennis on the lighted courts. That one’s a steal at $14.9m. Or maybe you’d be more interested in a fixer-upper in Los Angeles: Frank Lloyd Wright’s Ennis House, with separate staff quarters, can be yours for $15m and it is already “stabilized and awaiting future preservation.” Frank, whose designs were prone to have leaky roofs so caveat emptor, will surely bless you from the wherever-after of architectural geniuses.
Finally, mid-page, we learn that country superstar Alan Jackson’s pad (am I the only person who isn’t familiar with Alan’s oevre?) in Franklin, TN, is available for the first person to come up with $38m, and it has a bunch of rolling acres and a lot of two-story porches all of which “allude to the grand Southern plantations of years past.”
So here’s the deal. At the risk of being labeled a commie pinko redistribution of wealth fink, I am suggesting that we start a campaign of charitable giving to the national debt. It strikes me none of these prospective buyers and sellers (the above are only the tip of the golden iceberg) could possibly miss a couple million. They would be honored at a grand ball, no crashers allowed, at the White House, possibly receiving a copy of Going Rogue, unless some Obama fan snuck in and wanted to choose Dreams From My Father. The point is, they would get a whole lot of honor and acclaim, and if a few thousand of these folks — even if it took two grand balls — each enlisted a hundred or so of their closest billionaire friends we could pay off the national debt and throw the leftovers into funding universal health care.
Since I am NOT a commie pinko anti-capitalist scum, I am only recommending this as a one-time event. You don’t pony up, you don’t get another chance at fame and feel-good glory. Then we all go back to our CA Prop-13-protected homes or our suburban underwater mortgages and life goes on.
Could anyone possibly argue with that?
