In a video game, whatever allowed them to become billionaires would have been called an "exploit" and would have been nerfed in the next patch.
In '00s games, sure.
In '20s games, it would be part of the Pay2Win scheme and only available to players who have rich parents.
I mean its worse than that. Youd need to work at a rate of 16,600/hr, 24 hours a day for 2,000 years to get even close to Elon Musk
But if you got $5000 at 0.7% yearly interest rate for 2000 years, you'd get to Musk's wealth. You can only get that high with compound interest with investments, rather than earning money.
I bet for a long while you'd be like, "What even are dollars?", since they hadn't been invented yet.
Nevermind dollars. What about inflation? $5000/day in 1900 would be worth $187,000 today. That's $68M/year.
You'd need, what? 15 years to get a billion at that rate. You'd also be accusing money faster than Rockefeller.
I have to wonder where all that wealth would even be coming from.
Presumably the same place real rich people get it today. Gradually inflating the currency so that even if they're not directly stealing from you the increase in their wealth comes from the lessening of value of your, mine, and everyone elses money.
Gradually inflating the currency
Gradual inflation that happens under the national growth rate is fine. You need more currency moving at a faster rate in an expanding economy.
Gradual inflation in a contracting national growth rate is a huge problem.
Thomas Picketty lays this all out mathematically in "Capitalism in the 21st Century", and builds a strong economic case for a high graduated tax rate as a means of tying inflation back to real economic growth.
You'd also be accusing money faster than Rockefeller.
It was the 20 dollar bill that killed the butler, with a candelabra in the hall!
That why you should have invested that 969 million usd in bitcoin
/s
Okay but in fairness if you put like 1% of that money virtually anywhere but under your matress you'd probably be richer than Bezos now. Even at like 3% interest of a $18,250 compunded over 530 years you'd have about half of Bezos' net worth.
This is a few years old but still a good visualisation:
https://mkorostoff.github.io/1-pixel-wealth/
Start scrolling.
And do not miss https://github.com/MKorostoff/1-pixel-wealth/blob/master/THE_PAPER_BILLIONAIRE.md
Love this guy’s work
I love that this guy decided that GitHub is the place to share his socio-economic essay. Next to a guy who used it for his sourdough guides my favourite use of GitHub yet.
But if you made just 3% interest on your money as you deposit $1,825,000 annually, over 532 years, you'd end up having $410 trillion dollars or more than 2,000 bezos.
Interest is insane when you think about it
thats why investments are inportant for long term. the problem we face as a society is that the majority of people cant afford to make these investments, as they are living day to day with their paychecks.
2000 Bezos or about 4x the GDP of the planet.
People just need to invest and stop blaming others for being broke SMH.
Invest one penny at 3% per year, who can't afford one penny? You'll have $68 billion in just one thousand years. Poverty is a choice.
This shit right here is why ancient Vampire Investment Bankers are so insufferable.
yeah but 1.8 mil 532 years ago would have been valued like billions today. so you still need to be a billionaire to become that rich
Not really with that amount of time. Suppose you put away $1,000 a year for 532 years, at 3% you still end up with $225 billion.
The deposits are completely dwarfed by the compounding interest. If you only start with $1,000 and add nothing else but let that original $1,000 compound at 4% you'll have over $1 trillion.
kinda makes you think. billionaires should not exist.
Virtually everyone fails to grasp exactly how large of a number a billion is. It’s so, so much bigger than the ”very big number” people think of when they hear the word.
The difference between one million and one billion is roughly one billion.
A million seconds is a little over 11 days.
A billion seconds is a little over 31 years.
Billionaires should be required to count out their dollars individually every few days.
I wonder if world class mathematicians have a much better grasp of it — and yet fail to use their expertise to point out the absurdity of the current wealth inequality
Or do even they, world class mathematicians, not really ‘grasp’ it in this wildly important and urgent sense.
Big brain chuds: But what if you used that money to exploit the labor of others?
Linear growth < exponential growth
So... Basic math...?
The main difference is that you work at a linear rate, but can exploit others at an exponential rate.
I don't think this was meant for, obviously, really smart people like you. It is to give a sense of scale that a working person understands. The concept of a billion dollars isn't easy for most people to actually comprehend.
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