r/AskReddit • u/Previous-Ad3911 • 7d ago

You can have 5000 of anything that starts with Y. What do you choose?

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u/ismelldirti 7d ago

Years worth of income

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u/duhogman 7d ago

If you made $100k per year that would put you at half way to being a billionaire. Kinda hurts to put that into perspective.

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u/vkapadia 7d ago

Scale is a hell of a thing.

Another way to see the huge difference between $1m and $1b:

Let's say you made $1/second (which is an insanely good salary, $3600/hr), and you earned this not just business hours, but 24 hours a day 7 days a week. Earning $1m would take you less than 12 days. Earning $1b would take you over 31 years.

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u/southernmayd 6d ago

This was the way that was explained to me that broke my brain too. To add to it -- a trillion is 31,000 years lol, and the US has almost 35 trillion in debt.

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u/vkapadia 6d ago

A trillion is an insane amount, sure, but a country's debt isn't really comparable to an individual's debt.

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u/southernmayd 6d ago edited 6d ago

Of course not, but it contextualizes how much that really is. Most people see million / billion / trillion and just think big number and don't really realize how significantly different they all are. A million is a drop in the bucket to a billion, and a billion is a drop in the bucket to a trillion.

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u/vkapadia 6d ago

Yup, I see what you're saying.