$1 billion dollars looks like $20-$35 million dollars a year of indefinite spending, inflation adjusting, depending on the exact form of the billion dollars and the tax rates involved.
So, spending 100% of the after tax income of like 75 (well paid!) staff engineers at a big tech company in CA, but without having any job.
When I try to zoom in (by pinching the touchpad) on one of the charts at the bottom of the site, Firefox crashes. I guess there are too many pixels in the black bar :)
I find this visualization pretty useless. What I would appreciate is putting billion of dollars in terms of actual property you could buy with it, something like:
- This is a house (or palace rather) that you could buy for $1B
- This is an oceanic yacht of the same value
- This is a shopping mall which did cost about $1B to build
- This is an oil refinery that recently sold for $1B
- This is how many US senators you can bribe, and how many favorable bills you can push through Congress /s
This visualization is wildly inaccurate. The supposed 1000 pixels are actually 100x100 pixels, which is 10,000 not 1000. Secondly, on many screens they are not actually pixels. For example, on a macbook pro you're likely seeing 40,000 pixels in actuality.
What will really make it sink in is looking at what the highest paid athlete you know of earns in a year and estimate what their earnings are while they’re just there sitting in the couch, having a meal ($25k accumulates during an average meal) or taking a crap ($2500) - they earn about $200k in their sleep, for example.
Then realize they would need to earn that much for 800 years to have as much money as Jeff Bezos.
This is a good reference for the next time yet another security company goes for $XX,000,000,000 and the buyer says "because that's how much they're worth"
"The average American household spent $87,432 in 2021." That number seems awfully high to me? That's more than I am seeing the average household makes in 2023.
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[ 3.0 ms ] story [ 49.2 ms ] threadSo, spending 100% of the after tax income of like 75 (well paid!) staff engineers at a big tech company in CA, but without having any job.
MacBook M1 Pro, 32GB RAM, Firefox 141.0
- This is a house (or palace rather) that you could buy for $1B
- This is an oceanic yacht of the same value
- This is a shopping mall which did cost about $1B to build
- This is an oil refinery that recently sold for $1B
- This is how many US senators you can bribe, and how many favorable bills you can push through Congress /s
etc.
Presenter: "With two million dollars, you can own two nice homes."
Presenter: "With three mil--"
Audience: "Wait, who owns two nice homes, when so many people don't have any? Why is that even legal?"
Presenter: "Please, no interruptions; I have a lot more counting to do."
1 billion seconds -> 31.5 years
Then realize they would need to earn that much for 800 years to have as much money as Jeff Bezos.
Reminds "Something for Nothing" by Sheckley.
It's all bullshit valuation after $500,000,000.
* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8YUWDrLazCg
The length of one million USD is about the distance of a US football field or UK football pitch (which he demonstrates walking in a parking lot).
The length of one billion USD is driving over an hour at a speed of 100 kph (55 mph), the rest of the video.
(I originally posted $300 billion which is a number I heard recently but then realized that couldn't be right).