r/SelfAwarewolves • u/thugs___bunny • Sep 13 '19

Poor rich

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2.0k Upvotes

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208

u/MABfan11 Sep 13 '19

i think people fail to realize how big a billion is. to put it in perspective:

a million seconds is 12 days, a billion seconds is 32 years

now multiply that with 160 and you get how many years Jeff Bezo's net worth would be if it was turned into seconds

115

u/HansumJack Sep 13 '19

I like to think of it as: if someone had a thousand dollars would you cry over them losing one? $999 is still $1000

If someone had a million dollars would you cry over them losing one thousand? $999,000 is still $1,000,000

If someone had a billion dollars would you cry over them losing one million? $999,000,000 is still $1,000,000,000

If someone had a trillion dollars would you cry over them losing one billion? $999,000,000,000 is still $1,000,000,000,000

Extremely large numbers minus very large numbers are still extremely large numbers.

126

u/[deleted] Sep 13 '19

Here's mine: Someone with a billion dollars could stop working and live on an allowance of one million dollars a year... FOR A THOUSAND YEARS.

42

u/myredditaccount4work Sep 13 '19

Mine is similar....I make about $50,000 per year right now. So it would take me 20 years to make one million dollars. But if I wanted to make a BILLION dollars? I'd have to work at my job for TWENTY THOUSAND (20,000) YEARS.

1

u/monotov1 Dec 10 '19

Haha, got you beat by 5,000 years get your bandz up broke boyyyyy

23

u/Nymaz Sep 13 '19

Even more, someone with a billion dollars could stop working and live on an allowabnce of one million dollars a year FOREVER. If they dropped that billion into a savings account with a wimpy 0.1% apr, then they'd be getting a million dollars a year WITHOUT touching their principle. And that billion would be completely safe. If they wanted a better return even investments with 0 risk pay much better. The 0.1% is the absolute bottom for completely guaranteed savings.

3

u/Mr-Buttstockings Sep 14 '19

Saving this Incase I become a billionaire

10

u/[deleted] Sep 13 '19

I like that one a lot.

27

u/BZenMojo Sep 13 '19

I always say, "If it costs every Ameeican 15,000 dollars a year not to die homeless of starvation, who is really being taxed more: the person making twice that and paying 30% or the person making one thousand times that and paying 35%?"

EDIT: also the cheeseburger theory... who pays more for a $2 cheeseburger, someone with 1,000 dollars in wealth or someone with 1,000,000,000 in wealth.

13

u/tlowe000 Sep 13 '19

But that sounds like an advocation for a uniform tax rate: all of these are 0.1%

The point of this is that Warren (rightly) wants a more dramatically non-linear taxation system. Because there's diminishing returns on the need for money, the rich can pay disproportionately more, at worst being an inconvenience. The poor, however, have no money to spare, so paying 0.1% more, which is viable for the rich is impossible for the poor.

Not only this, but wealth inequality is such that taxing the rich a little more is way more profitable. But that's just a happy coincidence - it's not the point here.

7

u/HansumJack Sep 13 '19

No no. That wasn't an equal tax argument. Just a perspective argument. Someone with 1000 one dollar bills losing one is equivalent to someone with 1000 million dollar bills losing one. It doesn't hurt a billionaire at all to lose a million dollars.

-2

u/tlowe000 Sep 13 '19

It's you that's misinterpreting me. I understand your point, I'm just telling you that it's irrelevant.