Yes, even in tough times there are still ways to get rich in America. In this regard, here’s a half-dozen tips guaranteed to get you into the big buck big leagues.
1, Run for public office every two years. The office and the party you choose aren’t important. What matters is that the positions you espouse with great heat and furious energy attract a following that includes some individuals or groups with money to support your campaigns. Spend these contributions frugally, and keep what’s left over for your own personal living expenses.
2. Claim to be a Taliban commander. Go to the nearest British consulate wearing a turban and say you are finally willing to negotiate peace but will need expense money to travel from your hideout to the negotiating table and to bribe fanatics who might try to stop you. Make it clear you can’t provide expense chits, and demand to be paid in gold.
3.Get a job as a sportscaster on a local radio station. Learn how to shout wildly about the most innocuous doings on the field — to exaggerate play that is actually dull and repeated endlessly. Gradually give your announcing a biblical twist and insert occasional angry denunciations of national politicians. Get fired and rehired by another medium at a huge salary increase.
4. Parley disgusting behavior that gets you into court on a misdemeanor charge into an appearance on a reality television show. Once there, don’t try to be more outrageous than others in your group because competition here will almost certainly make that too difficult. Rather, just give yourself a tastelessly memorable nickname (Twitchy, Crankcase, Yuchee, Frank The Nitwit, Colonhead, et. al.) and take your awful behavior outside the show. Then get an agent with even less class than youself. Don’t spend too much of what you make in this way, however, because the money ain’t gonna keep coming in for very long.
5. Invent something of no intrinsic use and market it brilliantly. This includes turning something natural into a dreaded disease (think halitosis); something obtainable for nothing into something that costs a pretty penny (think pet rock); or something that seems to be the cause of many people’s personal failures (a previously undiscovered sin, a political belief that let them down, et. al.)
6. Service the fabulously rich. Since they are getting fabulously richer while the rest of us aren’t, they are a natural target for all sorts of parasites. Indeed, bilking them out of some of the moola they have bilked from the world economy is today this country’s biggest growth industry. So what’s the best area to feed in this fast growing field? A few decades back it would have been to play on the social insecurity of the nouveau very rich. But now that this class has been finagling so much national wealth into the second and third generations, its grown socially entitled and is no longer vulnerable to this technique. The best way to feed on this bloated wealth corpus today is to tap into its sense of victimhood — the sense that others don’t appreciate their right to all the goodies, and that all their critics are really jealous losers. Step forward as a sounding board for this rich victims claptrap, stick your hat out respectively, and watch it fill to bursting.
Yes, even in these trying economic times opportunities abound. And if anyone has the temerity to suggest that following these suggestions is somehow inappropriate, just call him or her a socialist or atheist and get back to work.
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