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You vs. A Billionaire: compare your income
- ss108 4y agoThis demonstrates something I kept say while people were dunking on Bloomberg for spending a bunch of money to try to get the Dem nomination in 2020 were being silly; for him, it was like the equivalent of buying new furniture or taking a vacation. He paid that kind of money to have a non-zero chance at becoming POTUS, and probably had a decent-enough time working on it. Made perfect sense.
- kerblang 4y agoIf Elon runs for the republican nomination I'll take him over Trump. Or Bloomberg will do, yes. Or a small and friendly but fiscally conservative billionaire turtle.
- avrionov 4y agoElon was born is South Africa, right? He can't run for president.
- JasonFruit 4y agoThere's nothing useful about this tangential comment.
- eggsmediumrare 4y ago
- bergenty 4y agoI would have actually liked Bloomberg as president. He seems like a reasonable man that could be reasoned with.
- billybuckwheat 4y agoI really don't need a website to know that I make/have at my disposal far less money than any billionaire. Or even millionaire.
- omot 4y agoI think you didn't get to the end. There is a plot twist.
- na85 4y agoNot on Firefox Android there isn't. Just a giant blank page after two comparisons.
- almostnormal 4y agoFor the daily cost to rent the webserver Elon Musk could hire an entire department of developers and purchase a data center to make the website actually work.
- anm89 4y agoNo, you don't get it. You can't just live your life. This must enrage you.
- nickstinemates 4y agoWebsite scrollbar thing is completely broken in latest Firefox on Windows. I get 2 scrollbars and have to scroll the 2nd one manually for the effect to work.
- zekrioca 4y agoSame here..
- eulers_secret 4y agoSince I'm unemployed, I just put in '0' (not quite true, I own some dividend stocks lol); every comparison was just infinity (∞). Also the scrolling is a bit broken on Firefox on Linux.
- leereeves 4y agoSeems to be broken in Firefox on all platforms.
- prescriptivist 4y agoWhat are you doing in your mini-retirement?
- nostromo 4y ago> In 2021, Elon Musk's net worth grew by an estimated $121 billion. And it's dropped by more than that in 2022... So I guess we should all be happy we've made billions more than Elon this year.
- engineer_22 4y agoTl;Dr: you are extremely wealthy compared to the world's poorest
- hatware 4y agoI put in $0 and got infinity for every answer. I'm more of an undefined kind of guy.
- alliao 4y agoit's quite a fun thought experiment but the guy really needs some lessons in economics. imagine billionaires cashed up all their assets, I doubt they'd get the full amount, probably 15% of their way into cashing it will crumple the rest due to market confidence etc
- prescriptivist 4y agoThe point isn't to compare if you took all your money out of the bank and put in your pocket vs Warren Buffett doing the same, it's that the proportional every day capital deployment/purchasing power that these people have compared to us is impossibly hard to conceptualize, so you have to start somewhere. This is almost certainly why the thought experiment focuses on menial, everyday purchases.
- notahacker 4y agoOn the other hand, Elon Musk could use his existing assets as collateral to attempt to buy Twitter without offloading much stock, and this web page is talking about tiny amount of disposable income purchases like a cup of coffee (or a few dozen coffee franchises with Elon's free cash)
- tannhauser23 4y agoSo I get that this is a click-baity way to get people to donate to people living in extreme poverty. But why compare yourself to billionaires? I'm not Elon Musk, and I'm cool with that. I haven't started multiple industry-changing companies. If I start the next Paypal, Tesla, AND SpaceX, I sure hope I am worth many billions - because my companies would be worth a ton.
- Jotra7 4y ago
- js2 4y agoThe wealth difference between Elon Musk and the rest of us is a historical anomaly that actually isn’t good for innovation. [1] I’m also reminded of the line by not quite Steinbeck: “Socialism never took root in America because the poor see themselves not as an exploited proletariat, but as temporarily embarrassed millionaires.” [2] 1. https://www.nytimes.com/2022/06/07/opinion/ezra-klein-podcast-thomas-piketty.html https://www.nytimes.com/2022/06/07/opinion/ezra-klein-podcas... 2. https://hellyesjohnsteinbeck.tumblr.com/post/23486952183/commonly-misquoted-socialism-never-took-root-in https://hellyesjohnsteinbeck.tumblr.com/post/23486952183/com...
- rob_c 4y agokinda broken in firefox, nice try though
- bergenty 4y agoI don’t think the numbers are right. If you make $59,000 you are not in the global top 1%.
- bluedevilzn 4y agoIt’s absolutely correct. You’re forgetting India, China and African nations make the majority of human beings.
- acover 4y agoHere's their source. It seems like a pretty reasonable number. https://howrichami.givingwhatwecan.org/how-rich-am-i?income=59000&countryCode=USA&household%5Badults%5D=1&household%5Bchildren%5D=0 https://howrichami.givingwhatwecan.org/how-rich-am-i?income=...
- snet0 4y agoOne thing to recognise here is that "income" isn't an entirely global concept, and has been pushed into a lot of places, which frequently go from something resembling a barter or trade economy into a place full of "low-income" people. Some people living on cents a day are living "fine" lives relative to their area, because not every exchange of goods or services is mediated by currency.
- jaqalopes 4y agoThis is a neat data visualization but ultimately unpersuasive. The idea is that I am much richer than someone earning $1.90/day (I am), and that in consequence I should donate $5 of my money to help that poor person. But why ask me? Why not ask Elon Musk, the presented point of comparison, to donate $2,000,000, which as this site points out is worth less to him than $5 is to me? Not only would he be giving up less, he'd be helping 400,000x as many people as me. It genuinely sickens me that people let billionaires walk all over the rest of humanity like this. Musk and his ilk could single-handedly transform the economic prospects of whole communities in poor countries. I can't. So why am I the bad guy for not donating the $5 I want to spend on a coffee to get me through my workday?
- stanmancan 4y agoI can't remember where I read or listened to it, but apparently giving away money isn't really that easy. I mean, sure, you can just straight up give away cash to random people, but that's not really what we need. Finding trust worthy organizations that have a good mission, know what they're doing, and can efficiently distribute large sums of money without a significant portion of it going to "administration fees" is apparently rather difficult.
- archagon 4y agoWhy is that not what we need?
- felipemnoa 4y ago>>Musk and his ilk could single-handedly transform the economic prospects of whole communities in poor countries So why can't governments do this? They own way more money than billionaires and it is theoretically their responsibility. Shouldn't your anger really be directed there? Musk is not really responsible for other people's well being.
- foogazi 4y ago> But why ask me? Why not ask Elon Musk Why not both ?
- 4y ago
- kache_ 4y ago
- foogazi 4y agoDoesn’t say that anywhere
- hsbauauvhabzb 4y agoCan we tag this ‘thinly veiled website asking for donations’? I dont mind donating, but I don’t like getting sales pitches the way the website did. It’s cheap and nasty.
- rubidium 4y agoIf you can’t take this sales pitch you need to get out more.
- hsbauauvhabzb 4y agoThe real world makes me mad too. Walk into a pharmacy and look at all the products they sell with the association of ‘health’ that have no health value. Vitamins and chocolate alike.
- bbertelsen 4y agoWas that irony intentional?
- phillipcarter 4y agoOoof, I did not like this site. It feels like it's trying to take away from the hilariously disproportionate wealth of Elon Musk by shifting the focus to "the world", with the implied message being "see, you don't have it so bad!". Nice deflection.
- stanmancan 4y agoThis doesn't seem to account for the cost of living; living off $100/day in San Francisco might very well result in a lower quality of life than living off of $5/day in somewhere else in the world. The general premise still stands of course. I'm curious; are there any organizations where donations help build regions economies? One would think that if a region relied on donations to survive then, without change, they'd continue relying on donations which isn't a great long term solution. The ideal solution seems to be helping these regions jump start and build their economies through education and financial support. If people can afford to go to school and get an education then hopefully they are able to start moving their local community and economy forward. Tough problems to solve, anyone know if there's any good books on the subject? I know there's nothing I can do to help but I'd be interesting in learning more about the problem and potential solutions.
- autarch 4y agoCheck out GiveDirectly (https://www.givedirectly.org/ https://www.givedirectly.org/), a nonprofit which does what it sounds like. They give money to the poorest people, directly. You can browse the site to find out why that's incredibly effective at alleviating poverty.
- gumby 4y agoI don’t understand the underlying math. Musk’s net worth went up by $121B yet he couldn’t afford to buy Twitter for 1/3 of that?
- paisawalla 4y agoBecause you can't transact with your net worth.
- hangonhn 4y agoI think it's a question of liquidity. If most of his wealth is in equities, he can't just sell $40 billion of TSLA without causing a huge price drop and losing voting power, etc. The way a lot of super wealthy people get liquidity is by getting loans against their less liquid assets. I think Elon did a combination of selling TSLA and getting loans to put together enough money to try to buy Twitter, IIRC.
- Isamu 4y agoMost of his wealth is not liquid, it’s his ownership of his companies. It doesn’t represent his pay.
- thayne 4y agoMost of his worth isn't liquid. As i understand it, it is difficult for him to liquidate enough stock to buy Twitter.
- thepasswordis 4y agoI absolutely hate stuff like this. My net worth has grown substantially in the last several years, however my income has actually gone down in that time. So do I have an income of millions of dollars? I haven't sold anything that has appreciated (and I don't intend to). Elon Musk's net worth may have increased, and most certainly Elon Musk is much, much richer than I am, and has a higher income, but this shell game of conflating "income" and "net worth" is just stupid. There are examples here like: "If you buy a donut, thats like Elon buying a dunkin donuts franchise!" Yeah, except I don't sell property or land to buy donuts. How much money does Elon actually take per year in income is the relevant question here.
- lern_too_spel 4y agoElon Musk borrows against his assets to pay for things. You could too.
- thepasswordis 4y agoIn fact I did exactly that to buy a Tesla!
- HWR_14 4y agoMany Americans do. Cash out refinancing of homes is very popular
- prescriptivist 4y agoElon was able to leverage his vast personal wealth to secure loans to _buy Twitter_. His purchasing power doesn't extend solely to what he is able to liquidate. In any case he can liquidate a million dollars a day in holdings and burn it in a barrel and it wouldn't move the market in a meaningful way. In fact he could tweet that and people would probably buy more of his meme stocks. You seem to be peeved about a distinction that is not worth making at the scale we are talking about.
- thepasswordis 4y agoI'm annoyed that people feel the need to lie in order to make a point, when the point would have easily been made without the lie. If they just said: Elon makes $200 MILLION dollars a year, then the point would still be just as valid, and it wouldn't be a lie. It's the same idiocy involved in people talking about needing to tax people more money. They're bait and switch income with net worth, which are radically different things.
- kortilla 4y agoMoron confuses increase in net worth with income, news at 11. By this token, anyone who owns a house probably made a $100k+ extra in income the last couple of years.
- mhh__ 4y ago> Moron As opposed to needlessly pedantic hackernews readers deliberately miss the point of the exercise? It doesn't matter if musk is hoarding jelly beans, people don't realize just how rich billionaires are. Personally I am a temporarily embarrassed startup founder so I'm alright jack
- kortilla 4y agoThe point of the exercise is based on a fundamental understanding of wealth vs incomes. There is nothing to miss because the whole point pushes a misinformed narrative that makes you think billionaires have cash to just take.
- cauefcr 4y agoUnless they want to buy Twitter, then somehow it transfers.
- mhh__ 4y agoThe fundamental nested misunderstanding is that the wealth vs income misunderstanding doesn't matter unless you're making a finicky point about the way equities work.
- kortilla 4y agoIt absolutely matters because it chances the whole concept to retaxing more of peoples existing assets just because they appreciated in value. People for wealth taxes muddy this because the support for taxing things before any gains are realized is really thin.
- elil17 4y agoIn addition to GiveWell (which I definitely support), you can support politicians who want to make people like Musk pay their fair share.
- neotrope 4y agoIt’s fantastic that Elon is so wealthy. He deserves it. The world needs more hard core engineers leading breakout innovations and stirring things up.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- davidguetta 4y agodoesn't work on my firefox