Prince’s Mad Money

[topum]

As many of you know, after I joined LJ slightly over two months ago I was surprised how strong the Russian segment of it was. I could barely find active journals in English but there seemed to be an ocean of super active journals in Russian. I got interested. Many of you also know how much I am into Google Translation. I read Russian journals via Google Translate sometimes, you might remember these.

Today I was looking at a couple of their top journals and saw a post about Prince. I got curious what the Russia's top blogger's take on it would be. Below is that post Google Translated from Russian with some minimal tweaks only to the bits which did not make sense at all after GT. I had to make those using a vocabulary.

I thought you might be interested too.

Google Translated from this post by miss_tramell, Russia's top blogger.

Prince’s Mad Money

Prince left an estate of $800 million.

-Photo of Prince-

He did not leave a will. The money will go to his nearest relative - his sister - a former drug addict and prostitute.

Here she is:

-Photo of Prince's sister-

And this is one of Prnice’s villas:

-Photo of Prince's lavish villa-

I absolutely do not care that the amount that can not even be comprehended (so huge it is), will go to a former drug addict and prostitute. It is absolutely none of my business.

What absolutely infuriates me is: why the singer Prince is worth nearly a billion dollars?

What he has done for mankind? He wrote a dozen hits in the '80s? Not just hits, but super-hits? OK. More than a dozen? Accepted. But is it really worth that huge amount of money?

Humanity is insane. I realized it a long time ago. It is unjustifiable for songs - no matter how good they may be - to pay millions. Showbiz Workers do not produce anything that moves humanity forward. They do not save lives. Their relatively light work should not be paid so obscenely high.

Every day 22 thousand children die in conditions of extreme poverty.

-Photo of a kid covered in flies-

In 2011, 6.9 million children under 5 died of hunger and thirst. Every hour took the lives of 800 children. They did not have enough food. They did not have enough water. They did not have enough basic medicines.

At the same time the singer Prince amassed a fortune of $800 million.

Showbiz in our world is severely overvalued, and human life is sorely underestimated.

Madness. Cruelty. It is, but it should not be. This is not even the way to the Apocalypse. This is the Apocalypse.

Comments

[topum.livejournal.com]

Would be strange if we took the celeb's money away given that we paid it to them ourselves voluntarily though. So in the comments I think they were discussing why we ourselves choose to pay so much for that stuff and not something else. So their obscene wealth is just a reflection of what we choose to pay for they are saying there.

[beautesauvage13.livejournal.com]

Interesting idea that.  To just say to all the Celebs we want our money back we paid you for all that entertaining you did. 

But you know we would not have paid if we didn't want whatever it was they were selling.

Be it an album of 10 songs they wrote or a novel they wrote or a painting or a gripping dramatic performance on film/stage.  We paid to listen, own, watch or admire because we enjoy such things.  I mean it is fun dancing to a song or watching a well acted play or movie.  Fun isn't always free. 

I do believe artists should be paid for their creations just maybe not as much that some are getting.  Mind you in reality it's more often the producers that are making the big bucks while the artists is getting mere pennies for their creations..Which is I think why Prince choose to take complete control over his work.  Seems to me he said as much in an interview with Larry King.  He didn't always technically own Purple Rain for example even though he wrote and performed the song his at the time Record producer owned it.  He got lawyers though and got out of that contract and started doing it all himself so he would get all the money instead of just a portion from the sales. 

See I'm of two minds on this.  On the one side I believe artists should be paid for the blood sweat and tears they put into their work..But on the other side I question the insane amounts of money some get while other artists starve who are equally if not better at the craft. 

Athena

[topum.livejournal.com]

I don't think they meant to ask for the money back ha ha, just not to spend it on this anymore if they ask for so much.
I actually do not have a view here at all, the way they framed the discussion in this post. I think the question has to be framed differently.

[randomdreams.livejournal.com]

I think it's framed pretty well, but I'd probably ask it right back: if a person sellsl a product for $1, and 800,000,000 people buy it, who is at fault? I think the answer is to heavily tax people that make that kind of money, and use that money to pay the teachers and ditch-diggers who are making stuff we'll need tomorrow.
The problem is that a majority of my fellow Americans disagree with me.
Then you have to decide whether the government gets to overrule the majority, and once you've decided that, you have to figure out what happens when the government decides to do other things the majority doesn't like, like lock them all up.
Unfortunately I don't think that would translate into Russian very well.

[topum.livejournal.com]

I really want to respond to you but will have to do it tomorrow. Writing (even a short comment) is a huge pain for me even in my native language and English is my third. I literally cry every time I have to write more than three lines I hate it so much. That's why I post pics mainly.

[randomdreams.livejournal.com]

I understand. I occasionally try to argue in Japanese. It's like pulling my own teeth.

[topum.livejournal.com]

In short, I would be against the super tax but I would welcome a tax / donation hybrid instead. Such that it is mandatory as tax but allows me (some) freedom to choose from a range of predetermined things it is going towards.

[randomdreams.livejournal.com]

I would like to see all income tax done that way: you have to pay X but you can allocate some percentage of it to only be spent on specific things.