What actually is $1 trillion?
Today, the world got its first trillionaire
The man who created the world’s ugliest car is now a trillionaire. Spawned by wealthy parents, this riches to even more riches story is a smack in the mouth to those who, despite doing all the right things, struggle to keep up with rising food prices.
Apologists will argue he deserves it, for reasons. Something to do with ingenuity. Definitely nothing to do with a car that traps its passengers while burning or 14 confused children with multiple women.
Anyhoo, I don’t think most fathom how absurd this number is. People can’t contextualize a billion, never mind a thousand billion.
For your convenience, and bitter pleasure, here’s what a trillion really means:
One million seconds passes in 11.5 days. One trillion seconds takes 31,700 years.
A four-year public college degree costs roughly $100,000. One trillion dollars buys 10 million of these degrees.
Mansa Musa, history’s wealthiest ruler, held an inflation-adjusted peak fortune of $400 billion. One trillion dollars multiplies his entire empire’s wealth by 2.5.
The median American earner makes $50,000 a year. That worker must labor for 20 million years to earn one trillion dollars.
Spend $1 million every single day since the year 1 AD. Today, you still possess $260 billion of your first trillion.
A stack of one trillion dollar bills stretches 67,866 miles into space, wrapping around the Earth’s equator nearly three times.
One trillion dollars purchases 2.5 million median-priced American homes out of pocket.
One trillion gallons of water fills 12.5 billion standard commercial bathtubs.
Ending world hunger costs $40 billion annually. One trillion dollars completely eradicates global starvation for a quarter of a century.
Providing clean drinking water and safe sanitation to every person on Earth requires a one-time investment of $150 billion. One trillion dollars funds this global infrastructure project nearly seven times over.
Maybe the world’s first trillionaire will put his money to good use? Or maybe we the people could nudge him along, perhaps with the goal of solving world hunger.
All it would take is a 4% annual wealth tax. A 4 percent annual wealth tax on one trillion dollars generates $40 billion, single-handedly wiping out global hunger. The billionaire retains $960 billion. A conservative 5 percent market return yields $48 billion that same year, making the individual richer than before with absolutely zero impact on their standard of living.
So simple and obvious it’s stupid not to. But it’d take some serious balls to enact such a tax, given most politicians are now representatives for the rich.
Thank you for reading.
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Sarah
Imagine the good that could be done by an actual nice person with this kind of wealth. Scratch that- it will never be possible for an actual, nice person to accumulate this kind of wealth.
I often think and write about the corruption and hoarding of the wealthy, in my lifetime it has reached obscene levels with no signs of stopping. My only hope for my daughter and that people will force what is less than 3k people to stop this madness and theft. Your article was well put and spot on, thanks for sharing it.