from Hacker News

You vs. a Billionaire: An Interactive Perspective on Wealth

by mkrd on 1/22/25, 3:50 PM with 64 comments

  • by Atreiden on 1/22/25, 4:19 PM

    Nice comparison, but this piece of math doesn't quite work out:

    > If you earn $25 per hour, Musk makes that equivalent in passive investment returns every 58.400 seconds (assuming a conservative 5% annual return on his wealth).

    (450,000,000,000 * .05) / 365 / 86400 (seconds/day) = $713.47/second.

    You'd have to work 28.539 hours at $25/hour to make what he makes passively in one second.

    Put another way, your annual income working 40 hours a week, 52 weeks a year without time off, (40 * 52 * 25 = $52,000) would take him 72.89 seconds or 1.21 minutes to achieve passively at the conservative 5% annual return rate.

  • by spencerflem on 1/22/25, 4:14 PM

    I find this visualization of wealth where every dollar is a pixel a lot more compelling: https://mkorostoff.github.io/1-pixel-wealth/?v=3

  • by inanutshellus on 1/22/25, 4:28 PM

    I saw a great representation of this several years ago. I think it was also for Bezos but might've been for Musk. It was a horizontal scrollbar with random points of various datapoints that would fit within his wealth. it went on for so long that it was spectacularly boring to zoom through.

    Reminds me of the story of Mansa Musa, and how he took a trip once and it affected the economies of the areas he visited for generations. . . The influence of these guys strains the imagination.

    [edit: @spencerflem posted it while I was ruminating - https://mkorostoff.github.io/1-pixel-wealth/?v=3... check it out!]

  • by sdk16420 on 1/22/25, 4:55 PM

    Consider this too next time you read about a billionaire supporting charity (besides their motives likely being tax breaks). For example Zuckerberg donated $75 million to a San Francisco hospital, which was plastered all over the news. Proportionally it's less than what the average person spends on charity a year.

    Even Bill Gates who donated tens of billions still sits on an unimaginable amount of money. And unlike your grandpa leaving $10k to charity and getting a honorable mention plaque, Gates's donation buys him and his heirs significant influence over entire nations.

    https://www.thenation.com/article/society/bill-gates-philant...

  • by grajaganDev on 1/22/25, 4:16 PM

    LA fires destroyed 17000 houses. Roughly average value: $3 million each.

    That is $51 billion by my calculation.

    Musk is worth $400 billion.

  • by richwater on 1/22/25, 4:17 PM

    As with most of these things, the (shallow) comparison is interesting but there is no actual justification for why it's _bad_.

    Why do I care how many jets an ultra wealthy person can buy? I literally am not affected by it at all. In fact, my best friend is an aircraft mechanic at a popular private airport. He directly benefits (full wage, salary and benefits) from the rise in private air travel.

  • by stego-tech on 1/22/25, 4:15 PM

    An excellent visualizer. I particularly appreciate the use of text metaphors and analogies in lieu of traditional graphics, as it provides a more relatable metric to go by than just starkly different bar sizes on a chart.

    My only critique would be to put into perspective social problems (e.g., homelessness, medical debt, etc) to demonstrate what portion of these could be solved through the wealth of a single billionaire. This is going to be even more critical as we approach the bleak reality of having our first trillionaire, barring global catastrophe wiping out asset values.

  • by mmh0000 on 1/22/25, 8:15 PM

  • by nsxwolf on 1/22/25, 4:15 PM

    These comparisons are a bit simplistic as it assumes both party's wealth is in cash.

  • by logankeenan on 1/22/25, 4:19 PM

    If you received one dollar per second from the day you were born then you’d be a millionaire in ~11 days and a billionaire in ~31 years.

    At some point, these big numbers are generalized as “big numbers” and we don’t conceptually comprehend the significant difference between “big numbers”.

  • by iJohnDoe on 1/22/25, 7:32 PM

    1,000 seconds equals 16 minutes.

    100,000 seconds equals 1 day.

    1 million seconds equals 11 days.

    1 billion seconds equals 31 years.

  • by finolex1 on 1/22/25, 4:16 PM

    Most billionaires cannot extract most of their wealth without crashing the price of their remaining assets. No doubt the gulf is still great, but it's a little smaller than the raw numbers imply.

  • by legitster on 1/22/25, 5:22 PM

    Musk is kind of a bad example. Something around half of his holdings in Tesla is currently tied up as collateral for loans into other ventures. Most of the rest of his net worth comes from his ownership of SpaceX, whose valuation is incredibly skewed by the small number of shares that have ever transacted. Simply put, I am not actually sure if he could buy a 787 with his assets right now if he wanted to.

    The comparisons are still good if we look at a "normal billionaire" (Let's say Charles Koch) with "only" $65 billion dollars (but they are much more diversified and fungible). The example of him buying a 787 and wrecking it would be the equivalent of me burning $10k. But some of the elements on this page don't work right when you use that few of billions to compare against.

  • by thro94958tj on 1/22/25, 4:16 PM

    Musk is rich, because government takes money from poor people, and gives it to Musk! I am not allowed to buy normal cheap car. I have to choose between expensive Tesla or bike! Government will even give $20k to Musk for every Tesla!

  • by anothername12 on 1/22/25, 5:01 PM

    I don't think billionaires should even be a thing.

  • by siva7 on 1/22/25, 4:12 PM

    You could be one day this billionaire in America ;)

  • by avalys on 1/22/25, 4:21 PM

    That's cute, but these measures of "wealth" are misleading in a subtle way.

    The way articles like this and most popular media portrays it, people like Jeff Bezos are wealthy because they are hoarding money that they somehow extracted from the productive economy and diverted to their use by nefarious means. Like fairy tale dragons perched on their pile of gold and treasure at the top of a mountain, lording it over the poor peasants in the village down below.

    When in reality, someone like Bezos or Musk is "worth" their billions of dollars only in some theoretical sense, based on the notional book value of their ownership of the immensely productive and valuable compan(ies) they built. This is entirely abstract - they could likely not sell their share for cash. But more importantly, it generally represents wealth that truly has been "created" - in 2000 there was no SpaceX and no Tesla, and now there is, and they're 'worth' $800 billion dollars, and Musk "owns" a large fraction of that. But this is entirely wealth that was created from zero through the creation and organization and leadership of these companies. It wasn't taken from anyone, taken from workers or consumers, or diverted from the economy. It was created out of thin air!