Kahlil Gibran & Infrastructure

            My wife went to see her cardiologist a few days ago. His name was Kahlil Salahudeen, and I wondered if his parents had been fans of the only other Kahlil I had ever heard of, Kahlil Gibran, author of a best-selling book called The Prophet. Did they name their son after the author? So I asked him and he said no, although he was familiar with The Prophet. Ah, well, so much for coincidences. But it did get me to look up what Gibran had said in his book. Here are a few of what I found:

“You talk when you cease to be at peace with your thoughts.”

“The timeless in you is aware of life’s timelessness. And knows that yesterday is but today’s memory and tomorrow is today’s dream.”

“You give but little when you give of your possessions. It is when you give of yourself that you truly give.”

“To belittle you have to be little.”

“Love one another, but make not a bond of love: Let it rather be a moving sea between the shores of your souls.”

            Every day I have a tougher and tougher time finding something to write about. What more can I say about Donald Trump? Or suicide? Or gun control or terrorist threats or opioids? In my mental voyaging, I stepped in one of our national potholes and stumbled onto the nation’s infrastructure. Everybody agrees that we need to do something about our infrastructure but how do we finance it? Conservative estimates say it would cost about $3.6 trillion. Whoa, that’s a lot of money. We’re already in debt up to our eyeballs so the government wouldn’t be able to spring for all $3.6 trillion. But the need for repair is essential. That thought led me to the many wealthy people in the U.S. Why couldn’t they pay for it? And if they did, would it be a voluntary gesture or a legal requirement? The truly wealthy have more money than they could ever need. Voluntary or required, what would it take? As of 2016, U.S. billionaires had $6.48 trillion; 156,000 millionaires had more than $25 million; 1,300,000 millionaires had between $5 and $25 million; and 9,400,000 millionaires had between $1 and $5 million. Sounds confusing, doesn’t it? If we got 10% from the billionaires, we’d have $684 billion; 5% from the millionaires would generate $3,037,000,000,000. Add in the billionaires’ share of $684 billion for a total of $3,685,000,000,000, or $3.685 trillion, which would cover the entire cost of an entirely new infrastructure. And how, you ask, did I come up with the $3.037 trillion from the millionaires? I took 5% of those who had more than $25 million, using $40 million as an average and got $312 billion; 5% of those who had between $5 and $25 million, using an average of $15 million and got $975 billion; 5% of those who had $1 to $5 million using an average of $2.5 million and got $1.75 trillion. See? Simple. Now all we have to do is convince these wealthy people that it would be good for them as well as our country.