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What will really make it sink in is looking at what the highest paid athlete you know of earns in a year and estimate what their earnings are while they’re just

What will really make it sink in is looking at what the highest paid athlete you know of earns in a year and estimate what their earnings are while they’re just there sitting in the couch, having a meal ($25k accumulates during an average meal) or taking a crap ($2500) - they earn about $200k in their sleep, for example. Then realize they would need to earn that much for 800 years to have as much money as Jeff Bezos.

herval 1y ago
Intuitively it makes sense that someone that owns a bunch of assets will have tons more money than a performer? I think the sportsman case is actually harder to accept for most people - “how can someone that ‘just’ kicks a ball around earn $200k sleeping?!”
climb_stealth 1y ago
Mindboggling, thank you. Right on that note is one of my favourite tweets on the internet: > Have you ever considered the possibility that Jeff Bezos just works 130 billion times harder than you?
- Ferret7446 1y ago
  It's not about how hard they work, it's about how much value they provide, or the worth of the assets they own if they sell all of their assets without a price crash
- anonym29 1y ago
  Obviously he isn't working 130 billion times harder, but he may be some combination of 130 billion times as much (privileged upbringing × strategically focused × economically impactful × smarter × harder working × luckier × n other relevant factors) than the typical American, that I can seriously consider. I also figure he, like Elon Musk, pays orders of magnitude more than his fair share, if we consider the definition for "fair share" to mean everyone pays the same amount of direct cash transfer into the system and gets the same amount of direct cash receipt out of the system.
  - JadeNB 1y ago
    > I also figure he, like Elon Musk, pays orders of magnitude more than his fair share, if we consider the definition for "fair share" to mean everyone pays the same amount of direct cash transfer into the system and gets the same amount of direct cash receipt out of the system. Pays to whom? Verifying this claim seems to require a definition of "the system." If you literally mean all money expenditure, then almost certainly this is literally true. But it's not obvious to me that the expenditure on, for example, Bezos' vanity space trip benefited "the system" more than someone spending a much smaller amount, but dispersed more widely through the community. Or, if it did, it's not obvious to me that the additional benefit was in any reasonable proportion to the additional expenditure.
    - anonym29 1y ago
      >Pays to whom? Verifying this claim seems to require a definition of "the system." Taxes paid to governments. "The system" being governments - federal, state, county, city/locality. Cash receipts out of the system would include Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, unemployment, WIC/SNAP, cell phone vouchers, housing vouchers, transportation vouchers, SSI/SSDI, and even all tax credits (including indirect tax credits, like Elon Musk receiving a tiny percentage of total Tesla profits, which are themselves a non-100% percentage of vehicles sold, which are themselves purchased overwhelmingly with customer money that does not come from tax credits, of the percentage of cars sold that are even eligible for tax credits). And yes, I do count those slivers of indirect EV tax credits as receipts for Musk, however significantly those dollars are diluted before they reach Musk, and count them against his contributions (which include the highest individual income tax bill ever paid by anyone in history).
  - Paracompact 1y ago
    > I also figure he, like Elon Musk, pays orders of magnitude more than his fair share, if we consider the definition for "fair share" to mean everyone pays the same amount of direct cash transfer into the system and gets the same amount of direct cash receipt out of the system. I appreciate the clarity, but this is a bizarre definition of fair share. Do you really believe that everyone gets the same amount of usage from, and contributes to the same amount of wear and tear on, municipal and infrastructural resources? Do you believe that industrialists do not ravage the earth and society while chasing profits? These externalities measure in the billions (when they can even be quantified at all) for players like Amazon.
- missedthecue 1y ago
  It's not accurate to think of his billionaire status as compensation. Jeff Bezos owns ~10% of a $2.2T company. That's the whole story. He never even took a penny of stock comp his entire career at Amazon. It really is an important clarification. I have worked at startups where the founders worked several times harder than I did and they ended up with $0 and one of them in debt.
kwanbix 1y ago
What is crazy is that they probably pay less taxes (percentage wise) than you and me. If they pay any taxes. Warren Buffet was famously quoted saying it was otrageous' his Secretary Pays 2x's his Tax rate. https://finance.yahoo.com/news/billionaire-warren-buffett-calls-outrageous-173016060.html https://finance.yahoo.com/news/billionaire-warren-buffett-ca...
lurk2 1y ago
I was sure your numbers were wrong but if we assume $200,000 in your sleep means $600,000 a day, that’s $219,000,000 per year. Bezos has an estimated 220,000,000,000 dollars as of May 2025. $220,000,000,000 per year / $219,000,000 per year = 1004.6 years. Wild.
- WalterBright 1y ago
  Let's have some fun. $600,000/per day, with an annual investment return of 7%, reaches $220b in 64 years, not 1004. import core.stdc.stdio; void main() { double wealth = 0; double pay = 600_000 * 365; double api = .07; for (int year = 0; ++year;) { wealth = wealth * 1.07 + pay; if (wealth >= 222_000_000_000.0) { printf("year = %d\n", year); break; } } }
  - anonym29 1y ago
    There appears to be an unspoken normative view being asserted throughout the thread that people who do not invest their money and take advantage of compounding should achieve outcomes comparable to those who do invest their money and take advantage of compounding, essentially idealizing the elimination of the opportunity cost of not strategically deploying capital, discounting the benefits accrued to those who can do the math and choose to act upon it rationally, and privileging the act of spending all disposable income on nonproductive ends. I suspect a nonzero amount of motivated reasoning is at play on behalf of those who choose to spend disposable income nonproductively on depreciating liabilities rather than assets; this seems closely psychologically related to regretting self-failure to optimize for long-term economic outcomes that is directed back as spite at those who successfully optimize for long-term economic outcomes.
    - lurk2 1y ago
      The point is that you can’t catch up, even making more money than you could ever reasonably hope to earn. If you had $220,000,000, you can catch up to Bezos in 60 some-odd years; but by then he will also have been compounding at 7% per annum, and will have north of $19,000,000,000,000, which is around 2/3rds of America’s GDP today. Of course, Jeff Bezos will be dead in 60 years, but this leads us to the core of the debate: What did Jeff Bezos’ children do that would warrant their wealth?
WalterBright 1y ago
A friend of mine, after a ski accident, looked for a knee rehab place. The one he found was patronized by pro athletes. He said they worked out like mad. He asked them why, and they said that if they didn't get back in shape, the $$$$ gravy train for them was over.
WalterBright 1y ago
> Then realize they would need to earn that much for 800 years to have as much money as Jeff Bezos. If they would invest the money, they would accrue exponentially more money. Most seem to just spend the money on silly stuff, and wind up with nothing (according to an ESPN documentary on it).
ninju 1y ago
There's a comparison between Michael Jordan, at his prime, and Bill Gates https://www.spiegl.org/humor/jordan_gates.html https://www.spiegl.org/humor/jordan_gates.html
- loloquwowndueo 1y ago
  Oh that’s the one I was thinking about! Thanks!!

herval 1y ago

Intuitively it makes sense that someone that owns a bunch of assets will have tons more money than a performer? I think the sportsman case is actually harder to accept for most people - “how can someone that ‘just’ kicks a ball around earn $200k sleeping?!”

climb_stealth 1y ago

Mindboggling, thank you. Right on that note is one of my favourite tweets on the internet: > Have you ever considered the possibility that Jeff Bezos just works 130 billion times harder than you?

Ferret7446 1y ago
It's not about how hard they work, it's about how much value they provide, or the worth of the assets they own if they sell all of their assets without a price crash
anonym29 1y ago
Obviously he isn't working 130 billion times harder, but he may be some combination of 130 billion times as much (privileged upbringing × strategically focused × economically impactful × smarter × harder working × luckier × n other relevant factors) than the typical American, that I can seriously consider. I also figure he, like Elon Musk, pays orders of magnitude more than his fair share, if we consider the definition for "fair share" to mean everyone pays the same amount of direct cash transfer into the system and gets the same amount of direct cash receipt out of the system.
- JadeNB 1y ago
  > I also figure he, like Elon Musk, pays orders of magnitude more than his fair share, if we consider the definition for "fair share" to mean everyone pays the same amount of direct cash transfer into the system and gets the same amount of direct cash receipt out of the system. Pays to whom? Verifying this claim seems to require a definition of "the system." If you literally mean all money expenditure, then almost certainly this is literally true. But it's not obvious to me that the expenditure on, for example, Bezos' vanity space trip benefited "the system" more than someone spending a much smaller amount, but dispersed more widely through the community. Or, if it did, it's not obvious to me that the additional benefit was in any reasonable proportion to the additional expenditure.
  - anonym29 1y ago
    >Pays to whom? Verifying this claim seems to require a definition of "the system." Taxes paid to governments. "The system" being governments - federal, state, county, city/locality. Cash receipts out of the system would include Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, unemployment, WIC/SNAP, cell phone vouchers, housing vouchers, transportation vouchers, SSI/SSDI, and even all tax credits (including indirect tax credits, like Elon Musk receiving a tiny percentage of total Tesla profits, which are themselves a non-100% percentage of vehicles sold, which are themselves purchased overwhelmingly with customer money that does not come from tax credits, of the percentage of cars sold that are even eligible for tax credits). And yes, I do count those slivers of indirect EV tax credits as receipts for Musk, however significantly those dollars are diluted before they reach Musk, and count them against his contributions (which include the highest individual income tax bill ever paid by anyone in history).
- Paracompact 1y ago
  > I also figure he, like Elon Musk, pays orders of magnitude more than his fair share, if we consider the definition for "fair share" to mean everyone pays the same amount of direct cash transfer into the system and gets the same amount of direct cash receipt out of the system. I appreciate the clarity, but this is a bizarre definition of fair share. Do you really believe that everyone gets the same amount of usage from, and contributes to the same amount of wear and tear on, municipal and infrastructural resources? Do you believe that industrialists do not ravage the earth and society while chasing profits? These externalities measure in the billions (when they can even be quantified at all) for players like Amazon.
missedthecue 1y ago
It's not accurate to think of his billionaire status as compensation. Jeff Bezos owns ~10% of a $2.2T company. That's the whole story. He never even took a penny of stock comp his entire career at Amazon. It really is an important clarification. I have worked at startups where the founders worked several times harder than I did and they ended up with $0 and one of them in debt.

kwanbix 1y ago

What is crazy is that they probably pay less taxes (percentage wise) than you and me. If they pay any taxes. Warren Buffet was famously quoted saying it was otrageous' his Secretary Pays 2x's his Tax rate. https://finance.yahoo.com/news/billionaire-warren-buffett-calls-outrageous-173016060.html https://finance.yahoo.com/news/billionaire-warren-buffett-ca...

lurk2 1y ago

I was sure your numbers were wrong but if we assume $200,000 in your sleep means $600,000 a day, that’s $219,000,000 per year. Bezos has an estimated 220,000,000,000 dollars as of May 2025. $220,000,000,000 per year / $219,000,000 per year = 1004.6 years. Wild.

WalterBright 1y ago
Let's have some fun. $600,000/per day, with an annual investment return of 7%, reaches $220b in 64 years, not 1004. import core.stdc.stdio; void main() { double wealth = 0; double pay = 600_000 * 365; double api = .07; for (int year = 0; ++year;) { wealth = wealth * 1.07 + pay; if (wealth >= 222_000_000_000.0) { printf("year = %d\n", year); break; } } }
- anonym29 1y ago
  There appears to be an unspoken normative view being asserted throughout the thread that people who do not invest their money and take advantage of compounding should achieve outcomes comparable to those who do invest their money and take advantage of compounding, essentially idealizing the elimination of the opportunity cost of not strategically deploying capital, discounting the benefits accrued to those who can do the math and choose to act upon it rationally, and privileging the act of spending all disposable income on nonproductive ends. I suspect a nonzero amount of motivated reasoning is at play on behalf of those who choose to spend disposable income nonproductively on depreciating liabilities rather than assets; this seems closely psychologically related to regretting self-failure to optimize for long-term economic outcomes that is directed back as spite at those who successfully optimize for long-term economic outcomes.
  - lurk2 1y ago
    The point is that you can’t catch up, even making more money than you could ever reasonably hope to earn. If you had $220,000,000, you can catch up to Bezos in 60 some-odd years; but by then he will also have been compounding at 7% per annum, and will have north of $19,000,000,000,000, which is around 2/3rds of America’s GDP today. Of course, Jeff Bezos will be dead in 60 years, but this leads us to the core of the debate: What did Jeff Bezos’ children do that would warrant their wealth?

WalterBright 1y ago

A friend of mine, after a ski accident, looked for a knee rehab place. The one he found was patronized by pro athletes. He said they worked out like mad. He asked them why, and they said that if they didn't get back in shape, the $$$$ gravy train for them was over.

WalterBright 1y ago

> Then realize they would need to earn that much for 800 years to have as much money as Jeff Bezos. If they would invest the money, they would accrue exponentially more money. Most seem to just spend the money on silly stuff, and wind up with nothing (according to an ESPN documentary on it).

ninju 1y ago

There's a comparison between Michael Jordan, at his prime, and Bill Gates https://www.spiegl.org/humor/jordan_gates.html https://www.spiegl.org/humor/jordan_gates.html

loloquwowndueo 1y ago
Oh that’s the one I was thinking about! Thanks!!