Can you imagine what a billion is?
Scrooge McDuck is famed for diving into and swimming around in his wealth. He fights tooth and nail to build his horde before gleefully plunging into the silo of gold, diamonds and cash—often to the bewilderment of his family. His imagined wealth has been estimated to be about $65.4 billion.
You may recall the infamous dragon, Smaug, from The Hobbit. Residing within a cavernous mountain, he hoarded stolen riches and precious treasures. Following the dragon's demise in the film, one of the characters succumbs to the insidious "dragon disease," prioritizing the amassed wealth over the lives of loved ones.
Smaug’s wealth is estimated at $62 billion.
Now, here’s the kicker.
According to Forbes, there are 15 people in the world with more money than Scrooge McDuck. More money than the dragon Smaug. More money than these fictitious characters, used to illustrate the height of greed and excess.
Fifteen individuals on our planet possess a wealth so exorbitant that it surpasses the limits of human imagination. At the apex of the Forbes list stands Bernard Arnault, Bernard Arnault, could fill three Smaug-style mountains up and still have enough money left to retire in luxury.
Now, the Numbers
The style the press writes numbers in does us disservice sometimes. In the news, we don’t write them out often. $1 billion and $1 million, written out in numerals, looks like this:
$1,000,000,000 and
$1,000,000
The perception of 1 billion is often just a small step above 1 million due to the way we write it. However, in reality, it is 1,000 times larger than 1 million, representing three orders of magnitude.
According to Credit Karma, the median American household income in 2021 is $70,784. When compared to $1 billion, that amount is equivalent to providing more than 14,000 families with the median household income for a year. To put it differently, if you never spent or invested a penny at the median rate of household income, it would take you more than 14,000 years to accumulate your first billion.
To illustrate the magnitude of wealth, consider the fictional character Scrooge McDuck, with his fortune of $65.4 billion. With that wealth, he could sustain the median household income of $70,784 for over 900,000 years. Assuming a 50-year career, this would support the livelihoods of 18,000 families for a lifetime.
While this analysis oversimplifies the intricacies of payroll, income, and wealth estimation, its purpose is to highlight the vastness of these numbers, particularly in comparison to the income of the average hardworking American family.
Billions of dollars are not simply acquired through hard work. There is no occupation on earth that justifies earning 14,000 times the median income. To achieve such immense wealth, one must extract value from the work of others, repeatedly and disproportionately, without giving back adequately. In a nation where children go hungry, and the elderly are homeless, this is simply unjust.
For more on wealth and income inequality, read this study by the Pew Research Center.
