Over-wealthy Oligarchs Have New Status Symbol

For $100M you can buy a trip to the far side of the moon. According to UPI,

Space Adventures of Arlington, Va., told the New York Times it expects to announce an agreement this week with Russian space officials to send two passengers on a voyage lasting 10 to 21 days, depending on its itinerary and whether the trip includes the International Space Station.

A roundtrip ticket will cost $100 million and the space tourists will travel with a Russian pilot. They will circle the moon and then return to Earth. The company said it expects moon trips to begin as early as 2008.

Eric Anderson, Space Adventures chief executive, told the Times his company estimates between 500 and 1,000 people in the world could afford such a trip.

"It's the same number of people who could afford to buy a $100 million yacht," said Anderson.

So let me get this straight, there are 500 to 1000 people who can afford a hundred million dollar yacht? What does such a yacht do? Is the narcissistic jerk who spent enough money to feed every starving person in the world for a year on an overpriced fishing-boat the kind of person we want to send to the moon?

Meanwhile, here on earth:

It is estimated that one billion people in the world suffer from hunger and malnutrition. That's roughly 100 times as many as those who actually die from these causes each year.

About 24,000 people die every day from hunger or hunger-related causes. This is down from 35,000 ten years ago, and 41,000 twenty years ago. Three-fourths of the deaths are children under the age of five.

A person just starved to death while you were reading this. People die of poverty every day. How many of these people could have lived if this prince or that heiress didn't need the latest useless diversion?

Louis and Marie lost their heads for acting this way.