r/AskReddit 7d ago

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

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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/NSA_Chatbot 6d ago

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

If you take a meterstick and put $0 on one end, and a Billion on the other end, a million dollars is at 1mm.

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u/tajwriggly 6d ago

I like this example. And OP said 5000 years worth of income. $100K is above average. 5000 years of above average income only takes you halfway up the meterstick. And the top 10 billionaires in the world are all worth over $100B, which means that their worth is over 100 m high, or roughly a 30 story building.

5000 years of above average wealth, measured in Millions of dollars per mm, only takes you to about the height of your knees, while the world's richest individuals are looking down at you from the tops of 30 story buildings.