Share the wealth

So many generous Americans. So many potential benefactors. Not a minute passes that an offer of heart-rending largesse doesn't slither into my Inbox. All this time I've harbored a viperous resentment of "high net-worth individuals" as rapacious robber-barons who would sooner sacrifice their own flesh-and-blood than part with a nickel of their ill-gotten gains.

I am happy to confess that I had them pegged all wrong. It seems that they are all closet commies, socialist comrades who just can't wait to share their good fortune with the proletariat. Take this fellow, who emailed me about five minutes ago for the forty-eighth time:

"Hey, Jim, I just won the lottery! Now I’m going to share my secret method!"

Oh, you mean that instead of guarding your secret formula in a nuclear bunker, you're going to email it to a couple million strangers?

But of course. And here are some more emails we're likely to see:

"Hi, I'm Warren Buffett, and I want you to share my insider trading info!"

"Bill Gates here. You know our ultra-top secret Windows Vista system? Now your IT start-up can have it too, in our open-source blowout giveaway!"

"This is Long John Silver. Ain't ye always wanted to know where ye could find a chest filled with gold doubloons and precious pearls? Well, now ye can, with my new video: Long John Silver's 'How to Find Buried Treasure in Your Own Backyard.'"

“Hi, I’m Alexander Solzhenitsyn. I've won the Nobel Prize for Literature. And I’m here to show you how you can do it, too, from the privacy of your home!”