A millionaire and a billionaire? That’s a huge difference. At this point, if someone is 55 and wants to retire at 68 and not be 70 and working at Walmart, they’re going to need to be a "multi-"millionaire.
Idk, I’m much younger, and my retirement plan is the same as everyone else my age: walk into the woods when I’m ready or die in the water wars later when I’m not.
But I still feel bad for the elderly forced to work because a retirement home with medical support, i.e. assisted living, is too expensive and your kids can’t help you because they’re barely surviving too, and that’s while working, and you can barely work, but assisted living is 4-12k/month, so you work and hope you die before you become a burden on your children and grandchildren.
Anyway. The difference between a millionaire and a billionaire is vast. One million seconds ago was last week.
One billion seconds ago was fucking 1991.
What’s the difference between a million and a billion? About a billion.
The people you hang out with.
It says “multi-millionaire”. I guess they don’t mean the successful craftsman or engineer with his own crew who has a total wealth of 1 or 2 millions, but people in the 100+ million dollar range. That’s at least how I understood it.
It’s like comparing an 8.0 earthquake to a 9.0 earthquake. Millionaire, billionaire, that’s the difference between
1945 8.1 British India, Makran Coast 15.0 X Between 300 and 4,000 people were killed. 1945 Balochistan earthquake November 28
and
2004 9.1 Indonesia, Sumatra offshore 30.0 IX This is the third largest earthquake in the world since 1900 and is the largest since the 1964 Alaska earthquake. In total, at least 227,898 people were killed, many more injured and 1,126,900 were displaced by the earthquake and subsequent tsunami in 14 countries in South Asia and East Africa. 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake December 26
and that’s log 20, a lower order of magnitude than from a million to a billion
this makes sense right? Someone tell me this makes sense
I think they mean it’s a 8.0 earthquake and a 80.0 earthquake.
No the richter scale is logarithmic. Adding one point actually multiplies the intensity by 10. (Well, roughly in this case, but it’s a lot closer to 9 than to 80)
But 1 million times 10 is… 10 million. You have to multiply it by 1000 to get 1 billion. It’s the difference between an 8 and an 11 on the Richter scale then, no?
Yes… yes, you are right. Woops
It makes it way more insane doesn’t it? An 11 point earthquake is INSANELY strong.
so imagine adding 72 points
THAT’S SO MUCH WORSE!
Tbf when people say “multi-millionaire” they are often referring to people with over 100 million, not 2 or 3 or 5
Imho, a good visualisation for the difference between a million and a billion is in this Tom Scott video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8YUWDrLazCg
Well, it seems that dragons are real lol
“Sometime around the 80’s. Next question.”
I mean, all people need money but there is obviously a point where you really do have enough to live comfortably the rest of your life…
“It’s not enough to simply succeed. Your success must also contribute to the active failure of everyone else.”
Meritocracy at its peak
You know meritocracy is now a myth right ?
How many yachts can you ski behind?
The billionaires don’t pay the salaries of the interviewers to ask hard hitting questions.
This is your reminder that Jeff Bezos owns the Washington Post.
Take from that what you will.
He’s not the only one either. Oligarchs own nearly all of our news media. There are only a couple exceptions, and those are independent groups that are reliant on platforms like youtube.
As a fun thought experiment – to get £1bn someone would have to give you £1 per second EVERY SECOND for 32 years.
No one needs that much money. And anyone who says they do, or anyone who defends someone who does, really needs to adjust their point of view.
That didn’t really hit me until I realized it’s £3600 per hour. That’s my monthly salary.
To hit that 32 year time line you would be getting that 3600 an hour, but you would be working 24 hours a day every day.
If you did 8 hours a day mon-fri at that rate you would earn 576,000 a month.
To get your 1bn at that pace you would have to work for 144 years.
Alright, no offense, but that has to be the least useful visualization of a billion I’ve ever come across. I already have to do the math every time I want to calculate how many minutes there are in a day and you want to use the number of seconds in 32 years as a reference?
“If you put it all in one dollar bills it would weigh ten tons”. There. Fixed. You immediately picture it now.
In pound coins it’d be 8750 tons, which is not quite as intuitive, but it’s a lot heavier, so it still has an impact, I suppose. That’s about as heavy as a small battleship, if that helps.This guy used rice to visualize the difference between one million and one billion and I thought it was pretty effective.
The fun part about that one is that Bezos himself is now reported at about one third more than reported in that video, so… that pile is too small now.
But also, if you’re gonna use visual aids that’s cheating.
If anyone ever wanted evidence that humans are too stupid to survive 1000 more years, they should read your comments.
Yeah, I think I’m exposing your stupidy pretty effectively, right? I’m killing it with the visualizations today.
“hey I agree with your point entirely but you’re fucking stupid. This other completely subjective way of saying your point is infinitely better even though it’s incredibly easy to find issues with! I’m way better at communicating than you, despite the fact that it takes two seconds to find and point out the flaws in my communication”
“I agree with your point entirely but you’re fucking stupid” is the best thing anybody has ever said to me. I’m making that into a t-shirt. A bumper sticker. I’m screenshotting that and using it as a wallpaper on my phone.
I simply picture a typical ten-ton object that has a similar density to dollar bills (just pick one among the many that you likely have nearby) and then imagine that it is itself made of dollar bills, and voila: An intuitive understanding of the nature of wealth.
No individual should have a… um… typical ten ton object made up of dollar bills, I guess. That seems like too many dollar bills.
Wait, I wrote “one dollar bills”? Sorry, ten tons is in hundred dollar bills.
In one dollar bills it’s a thousand tons, which has the same problem as the coins. Harder to visualize. I could update it, but at this point the correction is more interesting anyway.
It’s telling that nobody immediately noticed. Brains are squishy and don’t like counting too high. Or too small. The giveaway here should have been “wait, a coin is 875 times heavier than a bank note?”
And yet, not even I noticed, and I looked it up in the first place. Dumb squishy brains
I think the seconds analogy hits harder. Especially comparing 1 million to 1 billion (11.6 days vs. 32 years).
Your 10 tons doesn’t do much for me. A few F250s? A dump truck or two? Maybe do the comparison to a million idk.
But your comment came off pretty arrogant and condescending (“There. Fixed it. You immediately picture it now.” Not really man.)
Regardless the way people picture and grasp large numbers is certainly Subjective. The seconds analogy hits harder for me.
Well, that’s ten metric tons, so by way of removing three zeroes a million is ten kilos. The metric system wins again.
It also helps a lot in grasping why billions are a deceiving quantity, because increasing orders of magnitude gets weird. It’s just that the other units are a bit small so they paint a worse picture.
But still, how in the world does one not have an intuition for ten tons but goes to a specific pickup truck as a more relatable quantity? Is this why Americans keep measuring things in cups and football fields? I mean, if seconds work better for you that’s great, but… F250s? Seriously?
What’s your mental picture of 10 tons?
And how in the world does someone not have an intuition for time? How do you get to your apparently very heavy duty job on time?
It’s not an intuition for time, it’s an intuition for a cumulative quantity over time that’s the problem. I know 32 years is a lot. I don’t know if a thing a second for 32 years is a lot. If you gave me a thing a second for seven years or a bunch of stuff now I would need to whip out a calculator to figure out if it’s a good deal.
As for tons, well, you get that a ton is heavy, A car is a ton-ish, you probably know that. And one order of magnitude is still intuitive. Ten tons is ten of a heavy thing. You see ten ton things that say “ten tons” on them in real life. Trucks, cranes, that type of stuff. And it’s an absolute quantity, not a flow, so… you know, ten tons. If you use kilos like a normal person you also know how many of you ten tons is, because you know a 100 kilo person is a heavy person and you know how far from that you are. Again, the wonders of the metric system. I can tell you ten big people or twenty small people are a ton, so a hundred big people or two hundred small people are ten tons. I know what that looks like.
Anyway, at this point this conversation is fascinating mostly because it’s showing me that losing the scale intuition from the metric system makes you intuitively parse things in Ford pickups, and that’s more interesting than any of the possible ways to make people figure out the difference between a single digit multiplier and orders of magnitude.
“I don’t know if a thing a second is a lot”
So you’re just an idiot who has no grasp of how time works and your coping by saying “metric system”
There’s no metric time system. Everyone in the west uses the same clock. If I give you a brick every second of the day from sunrise until night, will you have a lot of bricks or just a few? That’s all you need to know for this analogy to work.
And regardless of if you use the metric or American system, most people don’t have a good grasp of the weight of big things. You don’t either. You say a car is about 1 ton, the average car is closer to 2 metric tons. Now your mental picture is only half accurate.
Your crane example is even more hilarious. Cranes are rated by how much they can lift, not how much they themselves weigh. A 10 ton crane , by necessity of how gravity works, weighs a lot more than 10 tons, but it can lift a stack of steel beams that weighs 10 tons. Also, how many cranes do you see every day that are rated for 10 tons? Do you work on large construction projects?
As for the groups of people, let’s play that out. I’ll just agree that I know what a group of roughly one hundred people looks like because this reply is already getting long. Now if I show you a group of pallets that are stacked with money that is the same mass as the group of people, how much money is that, how big are the stacks of cash? Do you know what 1 ton of cash looks like? Let alone 10?
You would never be hired to work for any of the media outlets that interview billionaires. Manufactured consent and aspirational capitalism is what media is for.
It’s a pissing contest. Who has the biggest number on their account.
If I was a multimillionaire I’d give so much of it away. I’d LOVE to singlehandedly fund our local cafe that feeds unhoused people every day, as well as house people all over the city. Nothing would make me happier than to actually do something meaningful. I’d be embarrassed to be greedy and buy Lamborghinis and shit. Give me a nice condo and a cute Mazda and a trip a year, maybe some clothes shopping, and that’s all I need to make me happy. The rest can go to improving the lives of those in need.
Bluntly, they need the money to make more money.
Most people of any significant wealth have a majority of their money/assets tied up in investments and other things. They’re worth that much basically on paper only. Their actual liquid monetary assets are generally very small in comparison to their “worth”.
They’re generally taking a relatively small cut off the top for their personal spending, and reinvesting whatever else they have “earned”. Once you get past a certain point with wealth, as long as you’re not stupid about it and ether invest it yourself or hire a firm to do it for you, more wealth is a normal outcome of having wealth.
There are calculations, as you may expect, to perform payouts “in perpetuity” (aka “forever”) which can account for growth/inflation. Personally, if I suddenly became ultra rich, I would find a good balance between how I live now and how I want to live, estimate what I would need to earn to acquire that lifestyle, then do the calculations to find out exactly how much I need to hold onto to achieve that, then either donate or otherwise give away the rest. I’d keep a healthy buffer on how much I’m keeping, and likely use some of it to update/upgrade key items in my life, not lavishly, but something better than I currently have (renovations to my home, upgrade for my vehicle, computers, electronics, etc)… Once my needs, both immediate and in the future) are satisfied and I have that extra “buffer” taken care of, the rest is useless to me.
I’d likely start with large donations to causes I believe in, and gift large sums to friends with coaching on how to make that money work for them as I did for me. My friends and I could become financially independent with a large enough financial “win”.
I don’t need more than what I require to maintain a fairly modest lifestyle. I don’t like, want, or desire any “glamour” or “fame”. I mainly want to be left alone. Paying off my house and having a good amount of passive income from investments is sufficient for me (where passive income grows with inflation year over year). Beyond that, I have no use for wealth. I only want enough that I can make that money “work” for me on the way that I’m no longer required to work. If my investments and buffer result in significantly more than I need being generated, I would give that extra away.
But I’m more communally focused than anything. Helping my friends and neighbors is more important to me than the idea of “more for me”.
To circle back to the point, wealth is the ultimate indicator of success in capitalism. People with excessive wealth are seen as some of the most important and influential people in a capitalist society. So to their mind, they’re important because of the money that they have. The mere suggestion of giving most of it away tends to be taken as handouts to those who haven’t earned it. Artificially inflating that person’s statue in society while diminishing their own. They’re at the top of the ladder of success in their mind, giving away their fortune puts them lower on the social ladder of success and therefore it’s unacceptable. The wealth they have is the representation of their importance, and by diminishing it, even a little bit, they’re “moving down” on the ladder of success, which is something that they never want to do.
I don’t agree with that, but I understand it. I’d personally gladly sacrifice my own excesses to bring people up. I only want for enough to secure my ability to provide for me and my family. Anything beyond that isn’t useful to me. I have no illusions of grandeur that because I have money I’m somehow better than anyone. I hold the opposite view, where earnings well above what is required to secure yourself financially, are unnecessary, and shouldn’t be kept. We’re all supposed to be equals in a democracy, but people who are aggressively capitalist see it differently.
*I only want enough to live comfortably for the rest of my life.
Okay this is great, I’ve got my house and enough money to live comfortably without worrying about the market at all.
Okay so I want a house in the city, but I also really value being able to get away from the bustle and noise of the city with a place by a lake in the country.
Well I can’t really relax while my parents and siblings stress about money. I need them to be reasonably comfortable too. I’ll set up trusts for them then relax by the lake and everything will be perfect.
This is great, but it’s a bit lonely up here at the lake by myself, I need a partner. I’ll try to meet some people in the city.
Everybody sucks once they find out I have money, yes I have enough money but I’m not in the business of buying dinner for everyone, we’re still going to split the cheque. Everybody’s just after my money. Well the people at the golf club are also interested in my money (well doing business) but at least they don’t treat me like a meal ticket. Maybe I’ll join.
Well I met the perfect partner. We deserve a wedding that won’t embarrass us in front of our friends. Finally we can relax and live a quiet simple life by the lake in the country.
Wow, my partner’s the best they really fulfill me. I should get them their dream car for their birthday.
Wow three kids, that happened fast. These are objectively the best humans in the history of the world. Also, I need to make sure they can focus on doing the amazing things I know they’re capable of without having to worry about student debt or part time jobs. More trusts. Soon it will be enough and I can focus on philanthropy. We need a bigger house, and a lake house that’s closer to the city.
The kids are complaining that they want a proper skiboat. Isn’t two weeks in the alps enough skiing every year? Kids will be kids, and I’m happy they like to spend time at the lake I guess.
These fucking spoiled brats want goddamn Ferrari’s for their 16th birthdays. No way. I draw the line at Audis. And now the ski boat sucks because it doesn’t have ballast tanks to throw a wake for wake surfing. JESUS FUCKING CHRIST MAKE THE WHINING STOP.*
But all of that is probably like $10M. So fuck Bezos.
This wouldn’t be me. I’m in a long term relationship, I have very few long term friends, a very small circle, and they’ve stood with me through thick and thin, good people, not the kind to take advantage; I’d still want to take care of them as best as I’m able with whatever I can. Mainly focusing on paying off debts.
I don’t really have need to find new friends, not flaunt my wealth nor horde it. I don’t want to move, there are very good reasons why I’m living where I am and money doesn’t change that. I don’t want nor need multiple properties for myself; I don’t like cities, I’m already living in a rural neighborhood.
If I were to move, I would only be doing it to have a bit more land. Our house is on a fairly small plot. I’d rebuild my existing house in a nearby location. The only real change would be adding a bit more floor space. But I wouldn’t retain my existing property. I would continue to have only one home, in a rural location.
I don’t really want anything lavish, just a little more land.
That’s probably the biggest change I would actually make given enough money to do it, and the costs would be recouped in part by selling my current home…
I’m just happy with what I have. Largely, I don’t want more than I do, I just want to be comfortable, and not worry about money.
The question doesn’t make sense to them. To get that rich, they had to throw away their morals. They can’t answer the question because they can’t process it.
There shouldn’t be any billionaires. We got that, because the system has derailed. There were some lackluster failsaves against the in capitalism inherent push to centralisation but those failed due to human greed.
Btw, what happened with the measures against “too big to fail” in international banking?
The fact that people perceive the billionaires to be the problem — and not the society, and in particular the government which allowed that to happen in the first place — is, in my view, not a good starting point to effect change.
The state is of, for, and by the bourgeoisie. The fact that a bourgeois state continued to allow the gross swelling of the bourgeoisie does not itself make the state the source of the problem. The state is a symptom of the disease.
The state isn’t simply an instrument of evil by evil people. It’s a tool. Since people act in their own interests, those who can abuse the system to gain outsized influence over it control the tools, and wield them in their own favor.
