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“If poor people knew how rich rich people are, there would be riots in the streets”

FireBeyond 7y ago
For a random visualization attempt: "Everyone in this room, stand up. Every second we're going to count a million dollars. If your net worth is less than that amount, sit down." Most people will sit down in a second or two. Some might last ten seconds. A billionaire will still be standing 16 minutes later. Every second, a million dollars ticking away. TWO DAYS later, you're getting to the richest people in the world. Remember, one million dollars a second.
- smsm42 7y ago
  One day, in your setup, is 86bn (plus change). By Wikipedia data, the richest person is Jeff Bezos with 113bn. So who are the two-day-ers? Poorest of them must have almost 173bn, who are those?
  - ZeroGravitas 7y ago
    Putin and Gaddafi (before his death) have both been estimated to have 200 Billion in wealth.
    - speedplane 7y ago
      > Putin and Gaddafi (before his death) have both been estimated to have 200 Billion in wealth. This seems pretty unlikely. Putin has certainly done well being a corrupt leader, and probably has control over $200B, but I doubt he has holdings that reach anywhere near that level. Gaddafi having that much money is a bit of a joke. It would require him having many multiples of the entire country's GDP in his own personal account. Perhaps theoretically possible, but hard to believe without better proof.
    - smsm42 7y ago
      I think it's impossible to properly evaluate Putin's assets as they are not economical property in classical sense of the word. If Putin loses his power, his assets could very well be $0. If he doesn't, he probably could control a lot more than he nominally owns, and a lot of stuff he controls is owned by all kinds of figureheads. So we'd have to exclude autocrats and such from the equation - what they have isn't really what we mean as property, at least in Western world.
  - FireBeyond 7y ago
    That’s on me - I forgot about Bezos divorce. Before that he was pushing 160B.

For a random visualization attempt: "Everyone in this room, stand up. Every second we're going to count a million dollars. If your net worth is less than that amount, sit down." Most people will sit down in a second or two. Some might last ten seconds. A billionaire will still be standing 16 minutes later. Every second, a million dollars ticking away. TWO DAYS later, you're getting to the richest people in the world. Remember, one million dollars a second.

smsm42 7y ago
One day, in your setup, is 86bn (plus change). By Wikipedia data, the richest person is Jeff Bezos with 113bn. So who are the two-day-ers? Poorest of them must have almost 173bn, who are those?
- ZeroGravitas 7y ago
  Putin and Gaddafi (before his death) have both been estimated to have 200 Billion in wealth.
  - speedplane 7y ago
    > Putin and Gaddafi (before his death) have both been estimated to have 200 Billion in wealth. This seems pretty unlikely. Putin has certainly done well being a corrupt leader, and probably has control over $200B, but I doubt he has holdings that reach anywhere near that level. Gaddafi having that much money is a bit of a joke. It would require him having many multiples of the entire country's GDP in his own personal account. Perhaps theoretically possible, but hard to believe without better proof.
  - smsm42 7y ago
    I think it's impossible to properly evaluate Putin's assets as they are not economical property in classical sense of the word. If Putin loses his power, his assets could very well be $0. If he doesn't, he probably could control a lot more than he nominally owns, and a lot of stuff he controls is owned by all kinds of figureheads. So we'd have to exclude autocrats and such from the equation - what they have isn't really what we mean as property, at least in Western world.
- FireBeyond 7y ago
  That’s on me - I forgot about Bezos divorce. Before that he was pushing 160B.