Cheng “Charlie” Saephan, who was born in Laos and immigrated to the U.S. in 1994, plans to split the money with a friend and find himself a “good doctor.”
One of the winners of a $1.3 billion Powerball jackpot this month is an immigrant from Laos who has had cancer for eight years and had his latest chemotherapy treatment last week.
Cheng “Charlie” Saephan, 46, of Portland, told a news conference held by the Oregon Lottery on Monday that he and his 37-year-old wife, Duanpen, would split the prize evenly with a friend. Laiza Chao, 55, of the Portland suburb of Milwaukie, had chipped in $100 to buy a batch of tickets with them. They are taking a lump sum payment, $422 million after taxes.
He only gets like 400m of that though, wouldn’t it be nice if we taxed billionaires and corporations like we taxed lottery winners so people with cancer could just get good doctors instead of being effectively sentenced to death for not being rich enough?
His hospital now: “Well would you look at that. Your treatment is suddenly $200 million. Man, that sucks. I’m sorry.”
I mean, $400 million is plenty.
I was listening to an episode of the Dollop where the children of two rich families, when they got married, were given the modern equivalent of $6.5 million to spend on their three month honeymoon.
I did some basic, conservative math. If given $6.5 million, I could very comfortably live the rest of my life. Keep the $500k liquid and invest the $6mil even in very safe investments like treasury bonds or bills, and live on the interest.
If $6.5 million is enough to live comfortably on, $400 million is more than enough.
Edit: So sorry downvoters, I did a poor job responding here. I only replied to the “he only got $400 million” part and I didn’t spell out that I agree that billionaires shouldn’t exist and should be taxed heavily, so I can see where you might’ve thought I wasn’t properly anti-billionaire by only responding to one part of the post.
Just to make it clear, fuck billionaires. I feel like that could’ve been inferred by saying one could comfortably live a life of luxury off $6.5 mil, but I can understand the confusion.
You’re right, billionaires should probably just get taxed out of existence, that’s more money that anyone could ever need even if they lived dozens of lifetimes.
I agree 100%. Nothing I said in my post was meant to disagree with that part.
Idk I spent the entire billion in my head the other day and got quite mad when I realized I wouldn’t even get half of it.