Timing was everything. Ever since the new, ultra-progressive tax code had been formalized, the race was on. The challenge was to become the second-richest person in America by midnight on New Year’s Eve. The richest would be left with nothing, the entirety of their wealth seized by the government.

Of course, the real game only began in December. If you started too early, you would be left without enough money to even approach the number two spot in the next year. It was more of a blow to pride than a real loss, when you were talking billions of dollars, but no one competitive enough to be one of the richest in the world had any shortage on pride.

On December 1st, Jeff Bates and Slim Bill faced off in Times Square. Bates had a small lead going in, at just over a hundred billion dollars. Slim Bill was only in the upper nineties.

The two of them were surrounded by a crowd of starving middle class people, dressed in rags. They were eager. December was the month when those two would shake riches enough for a lifetime off like dust from their sleeves. They did stay careful to leave them a safe distance. There was no use in killing the golden goose before it laid its eggs.

“Pathetic,” Slim Bill told Bates. Bill was dressed in a robe of solid gold, with an Boston Labs exoskeleton underneath, designed specifically to help him hold up the weight. Diamonds adorned his earlobes. The left had been doused in blood from the prince of England; the right in Audrey Hepburn’s blood, produced in a lab from a DNA sample. On his shoulder rested a one-of-a-kind Chanel purse fashioned from quagga fur. It was easy to be secure in your masculinity when you had more money than God.

Bates wore jeans and a black turtleneck. His outfit couldn’t have cost more than a hundred dollars, even the shoes.

“You brought toys. I’m thinking bigger.” He gestured upwards.

“Slim Bill is a loser,” splashed across the Times Square Tower.

“At $23 million a year to rent, it’s a bargain really,” he said. “I’ve rented it out for the next hundred years, paid in advance. That should put me neatly into second place.”

Slim smiled. “That’s going to embarrassing for the next hundred years when you lose.” He reached into his purse and pulled the Hope diamond.

“$350 million is the valuation, but I’m afraid I’m an awful bargainer this time of year. They managed to push me to 500.”

He punted it away like a hacky sack. The crowd dove, tearing at each other for scraps.

“As for this,” he gestured to his outfit, “I didn’t even ask for the price. But I’m in second, don’t you worry about that Jeff.”

Slim slipped off his robe and walked away naked, leaving his other expensive toys behind.

Bates stood there, fist clenched and thinking hard.

A month passed. Slim Bill and Jeff Bates drove each other to ever-increasing heights of conspicuous spending, but stayed careful not to overdo it. The third place candidate had $74 billion and dropping below that would defeat the point of the game. One obvious way to force victory would be to give ten or twenty billion to their opponent, but it was a cheap win. Neither of them would sink to that level.

In the first week they started with charitable donations. 564,708 homeless people lived in the United States. They started tracking things a lot better in late November. Bates bought each of them a laptop and an iPhone X, for $2000 a person. Just over a billion dollars.

Slim paid rent for each of them for a year. At an average of $600/month, he spent a little over 4 billion dollars. Part of it was spent on buying houses, which became assets and thus didn’t count towards the contest. Everything else was actual rent in more expensive neighborhoods.

Bates - 97. Slim - 93.

In the next two weeks, Bates had to step it up. Huge national donations took time to roll out, and his opponent had a $4 billion dollar lead. He decided to hold the biggest party of all time.

He rented out every beach on the east coast. Legal? Maybe. But governors were tripping over themselves to have him spend money in their state. For the actual entertainment, he had 198 F/A 18 Hornets doing shows up and down the coast in squads of six. Free food went without saying.

He considered free flights out for anyone who wanted to come, but if he did that, he’d have to include hotel fees, and everything would get a lot more unpredictable. Third place beckoned.

The planes were most expensive, about $5.8 billion. He let the pilots take them home afterwards. Most states didn’t charge for the beach rentals and the ones that did only cost him about $300 million. He set up a public account online with $2 billion and made it usable only to buy food with for the party. If they didn’t use it all up that day, it would be gone by the end of the month.

In the same two weeks, Slim spent most of his time pissing off rooftops, inviting lawsuits that he quickly settled as expensively as he could. Headlines about trickle-down wealth got old very quickly.

Bates - 90. Slim - 91.

Bates was starting to get paranoid. It was December 31st, and Slim hadn’t made any moves in weeks. Just after 11 p.m., he donated $5 billion to cancer research. It was a boring move, rarely done. But he knew Slim had something planned and he wanted to widen his lead while he still had it.

Bates - 85. Slim - 91.

He knew Slim had something planned because he had invited Bates to the California border.

“For ten billion dollars…” Slim held his pinky to his mouth and grinned. “I have purchased the city of Fremont, California.”

“Ten billion for a city in a blue state? You drastically overpaid.” The two of them laughed.

“Fremont is hungry for billionaire investment, just like the rest of Silicon Valley. If anything, it was a bargain,” Slim Bill said. "But now, victory is mine."

Bates squinted. “Are you forgetting the rules of the game? Assets count.” He felt hope spring up. It was 11:45 p.m. now. It was too late for him to make another purchase, but the same was true for Slim. If this was his last play, it wouldn’t be enough.

“I know. But you see, even though I’m the richest man in the world, there’s one thing I still don’t bother to pay for.” Slim lit a match.

“And what’s that?” Bates said, feeling his hope slip away.

“Fire insurance.”

Slim threw the largely symbolic match, then sent a non-symbolic text. When midnight struck, all of Fremont was burning. Nearly a quarter of a million people died before they could be evacuated. The other billionaires agreed it was one of the best games in years.