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.
climb_stealth · 51s ago
Mindboggling, thank you. Right on that note is one of my favourite tweets on the internet:
> Have you ever considered the possibility that Jeff Bezos just works 130 billion times harder than you?
herval · 7m ago
Intuitively it makes sense that someone that owns a bunch of assets will have tons more money than a performer?
I think the sportsman case is actually harder to accept for most people - “how can someone that ‘just’ kicks a ball around earn $200k sleeping?!”
SoftTalker · 55s ago
Now consider we accue $300 billion per day in interest on our national debt.
throw0101d · 27m ago
Tom Scott did a video on this, "A Million Dollars vs A Billion Dollars, Visualized: A Road Trip":
$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.
harmmonica · 39m ago
I always thought one of the biggest problems with modern education is not spending enough time teaching people about interest rates/return on investment. If everyone just understood what you're pointing out here--just really "got it"--I feel like the world would be in a much better place. It's not dire (I don't think?), and I know we've come a very long way, but, man, it could be so much better.
al_borland · 27m ago
Maybe. A lot of these calculations are usually based on historical averages for the US stock market. For the economy to keep moving, they need people to spend their money.
Eventually it may all even out, where people spend so much once they hit a certain point in their life/portfolio, that it allows for everyone else to be saving and investing everything in the first few decades of life. But a transition period where everyone stops their mindless consumerism would be rough on markets. Sales of “wants” would collapse and the stocks would fall right with them. At least that’s my theory.
I also often wonder if the stock performance we’ve seen is simply a result of the way the population has grown. If we are seeing slowing growth, or even population decline, can we expect the markets to contract right a long with the population. What will that mean for everyone’s retirement accounts?
harmmonica · 15m ago
I appreciate what you're saying here, all of it, and wonder some of the same, but my comment was likely overly cryptic because I didn't mean anything about consumption.
xhrpost · 1h ago
1 million seconds -> 11.5 days
1 billion seconds -> 31.5 years
No comments yet
throwmeaway222 · 30m ago
It looks like 4 (I think we're up to $250M TC now?) AI engineers at Meta.
JoeAltmaier · 1h ago
A cube of 100 dollar bills four feet on a side is about 160M dollars. So, six of them.
rapnie · 40m ago
This made me do a search on the missing Iraqi billions, as I remember there were details at the time how it was packaged in pallets and flown into the country. Couldn't find that, but according to The Guardian [0]:
> Over the first 14 months of the occupation, 363 tonnes of new $100 bills were shipped in - $12bn, in cash.
Surprisingly portable. I can see why the Treasury doesn't want to print larger denomination bills
bji9jhff · 1h ago
Actually, a billion dollars look like a ten digit number at the bottom of a spreadsheet.
xnx · 37m ago
This would fit in a standard cargo van, but the weight would crush it.
jules · 47m ago
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.
jdross · 33m ago
The second box is 10,000 pixels (100x100). Not 1,000 pixels (31x31)
nsxwolf · 8m ago
Now stack them into cubes and it looks way smaller.
shmerl · 44m ago
> To earn $1,000,000,000 you'd have to work more than 1,379 lifetimes!
Reminds "Something for Nothing" by Sheckley.
BinaryMachine · 28m ago
thats depressing
shmerl · 19m ago
Yeah, mining stone for someone's "free" palace for who knows how many lifetimes is no fun.
1970-01-01 · 42m ago
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"
It's all bullshit valuation after $500,000,000.
Animats · 37m ago
The world has about 3000 US$ billionaires.
LimeLimestone · 1h ago
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 :)
MacBook M1 Pro, 32GB RAM, Firefox 141.0
m3kw9 · 17m ago
I don’t think anyone has a billion dollars cash in their bank accounts. Is mostly valuation and likely what billionaires keep in cash is 5 million
taf2 · 47m ago
Now add the US debt!
stephen_g · 10m ago
If you're looking at a billion dollars you're looking at all kinds of debt, including US bonds. Much of what gives money value is the existence of debt (another thing is the obligation of taxation). Always has been, which is why trying to tie currencies to values of commodities or precious metals has always collapsed eventually...
neilv · 1h ago
Presenter: "With a million dollars, you can own a nice home."
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."
mikewarot · 59m ago
In my neighborhood a million dollars would have a nice home, and 3 rental properties, for a total of 4 homes.
loloquwowndueo · 50m ago
Four houses. You have one home. The rest are just houses.
jiggawatts · 25m ago
In Australia, a million dollars (US or AUD, doesn't matter) is a deposit on a nice home.
My former boss just sold his business and become a multi-millionaire. He'll have to go back into the workforce to be able to afford a decent -- but not palatial -- home in a nice suburb.
Detrytus · 1h ago
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
etc.
apsurd · 55m ago
as useless as you say the visualization is, so is property comparison because what does "$1B worth of real estate" even mean?
Raw materials + labor + debt financing + geographical point-in-time land value? It'd be easier to intuit these vs look at some nice pixels?
It’s a little old so inflation is a factor, but still really good intuition
tharkun__ · 54m ago
Did you actually scroll to the bottom or got bored while scrolling and scrolling and scrolling on the big black box running "top to bottom"?
The whole thing is about perspective. The big black box is just the start.
I find it much more enlightening to think about all the pixels I had to scroll past, then seeing the same thing represented by a big and then small black circle and put it in perspective with things like people working minimum wage all their lives all the way up to the Bezos and Musks of the world.
Those relative sizes feel immediately "relatable" even though they're "just numbers".
On the other hand I find your examples (no offense intended) lack that.
This is a house (or palace rather) that you could buy for $1B
This is very area specific. I can buy the same house / palace for way less than a billion in one place vs. another.
This is an oceanic yacht of the same value
From a quick Google, most super yachts "in that price range" cost less than 0.5 billion. Not that this makes it any more relatable.
This is a shopping mall which did cost about $1B to build
Seems like the house thing above :shrug:
This is an oil refinery that recently sold for $1B
Refineries always just look huge to me. Whether they cost $1B or $100,000,000 I really couldn't tell you. It's just a huge place of tubes and stuff. I have no frame of reference so to speak.
This is how many US senators you can bribe, and how many favorable bills you can push through Congress /s
Lacking frame of reference as well, though yeah, the /s was worth thinking about this one. Maybe the original site could represent this as a number or relatively sized circles. "This is how many bills you could buy with this in 1975 vs. 2000 vs. 2025" /s
But then it'd really be about inflation instead of perspective.
Then realize they would need to earn that much for 800 years to have as much money as Jeff Bezos.
> Have you ever considered the possibility that Jeff Bezos just works 130 billion times harder than you?
I think the sportsman case is actually harder to accept for most people - “how can someone that ‘just’ kicks a ball around earn $200k sleeping?!”
* 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.
http://www.milliondollarhomepage.com/
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.
Eventually it may all even out, where people spend so much once they hit a certain point in their life/portfolio, that it allows for everyone else to be saving and investing everything in the first few decades of life. But a transition period where everyone stops their mindless consumerism would be rough on markets. Sales of “wants” would collapse and the stocks would fall right with them. At least that’s my theory.
I also often wonder if the stock performance we’ve seen is simply a result of the way the population has grown. If we are seeing slowing growth, or even population decline, can we expect the markets to contract right a long with the population. What will that mean for everyone’s retirement accounts?
1 billion seconds -> 31.5 years
No comments yet
> Over the first 14 months of the occupation, 363 tonnes of new $100 bills were shipped in - $12bn, in cash.
[0] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2006/mar/20/usa.iraq
No comments yet
Reminds "Something for Nothing" by Sheckley.
It's all bullshit valuation after $500,000,000.
MacBook M1 Pro, 32GB RAM, Firefox 141.0
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."
My former boss just sold his business and become a multi-millionaire. He'll have to go back into the workforce to be able to afford a decent -- but not palatial -- home in a nice suburb.
- 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.
Raw materials + labor + debt financing + geographical point-in-time land value? It'd be easier to intuit these vs look at some nice pixels?
It’s a little old so inflation is a factor, but still really good intuition
The whole thing is about perspective. The big black box is just the start.
I find it much more enlightening to think about all the pixels I had to scroll past, then seeing the same thing represented by a big and then small black circle and put it in perspective with things like people working minimum wage all their lives all the way up to the Bezos and Musks of the world.
Those relative sizes feel immediately "relatable" even though they're "just numbers".
On the other hand I find your examples (no offense intended) lack that.
This is very area specific. I can buy the same house / palace for way less than a billion in one place vs. another. From a quick Google, most super yachts "in that price range" cost less than 0.5 billion. Not that this makes it any more relatable. Seems like the house thing above :shrug: Refineries always just look huge to me. Whether they cost $1B or $100,000,000 I really couldn't tell you. It's just a huge place of tubes and stuff. I have no frame of reference so to speak. Lacking frame of reference as well, though yeah, the /s was worth thinking about this one. Maybe the original site could represent this as a number or relatively sized circles. "This is how many bills you could buy with this in 1975 vs. 2000 vs. 2025" /sBut then it'd really be about inflation instead of perspective.