Dan Cameron
Dr. Bradley J. SommerWhen we talk about how billionaires shouldn’t exist I don’t think people really understand the massive difference in scale between a million and a billion. One million seconds is 12 days. A billion seconds is 31 years. It’s an unfathomable amount of money that no one should have. Even uber-rich mega millionaires - hundreds of millions - really shouldn’t exist. We need to tax the rich; they’re the real free loaders. They’re the drains on the economy. They’re the ones dragging society down.
People in the replies trying to explain history and economics to me like GTFOOH kids 😂
Mike Taylor 🦕@drhistorybrad I have often wondered how much damage has been done by the words "million" and "billion" sounding the same. No-one even confuses (say) a 10 thousand pound purchase with a 10 million pound one. But we easily confuse 10 million with 10 billion.
Nina Kalinina@mike @drhistorybrad hm, would "mega"/"giga" help? Because every kid knows the difference between 10 megabytes and 10 gigabytes nowadays
@nina_kali_nina @drhistorybrad It would have been better, wouldn't it? But even then I had to admit (to my shame, having grown up with the 5 Kb of a VIC-20) I sometimes slip in my mind between Mb and Gb.
MysticalWolf@drhistorybrad And they always will be. History shows it.
Badwolf303@drhistorybrad We should tax the rich but we were taxing the rich & they spent the last 70+ years undoing that by buying politicians & establishing news organizations to push their desires. #democrats are being kneecapped at the local & state level. #billionaires
BigTheDave@drhistorybrad Recently I've taken to describing it as three tiers of wealth.
- Those that have to convince the bank to give them a loan (Most of us)
- Those that don't have to convince the bank to give them a loan (Millionaires)
- Those whose 'Net Worth' is so high that they use loans as pocket money (Ultra Rich)
Shaun (he/ him)@drhistorybrad @jon_harbert I reference this excellent visualization every time I have to tell someone how ludicrous billionaires are
Alfonso Urdaneta@ShmosKnows @drhistorybrad @jon_harbert
This was an amazing visualization, thank you for sharing it.
Blippy the Wonder Slug (MOVED)
Rob Striker@drhistorybrad .when Bezos bought/ saved the Washington Post or when Gates tried to get them all to donate thier fortune, u think they might be a force for good. But all you need to see is how Musk not only destroyed twitter, but tried to anoint Desantis as the republican candidate to see how dangerous these people are. All of them.
Josh Collinsworth@drhistorybrad A couple other comparisons I've found useful:
If you stood on top of a stack of a million $1 bills, you'd be about a football field off the ground. If you stood on a stack of a billion $1 bills, you'd be in space.
If I gave you $100,000 a year, you'd need a decade to become a millionaire. But you'd need significantly more than the length of all of recorded human history to become a billionaire.
John Meadows@drhistorybrad The 1% have done a splendid job getting the poor and the middle class to attack each other.
GATEKEEPER@drhistorybrad
If you make and save $1M a year , In 1000 years you'll become a Billionaire and an asshole at the same time.
If you make and save $1M a year , In 1000 years you'll become a Billionaire and an asshole at the same time.
RealBillyG@drhistorybrad oh we get it. It’s just that they’ve already used their collective unfathomable wealth to rig the system so that they will never get taxed appropriately, and never suffer any real consequences at all.
Jeff Shaffer CBET, ret@drhistorybrad Another way to get a sense of the enormity of it is in minutes. A million minutes ago it was 2022, but a billion minutes ago it was the year 108. Or, as has been posted recently, eating one billionaire would do more to stop worsening climate change than driving an electric car and going vegan!
VHaschThe amount of currency on the planet is finite. The amount of interest and profit possible in capitalism is not.
Even with crypto, there is a dead end somewhere up ahead.
geoma 
@drhistorybrad just for clarification, we are talking about billions as in a thousand millions, right? (And not a million millions)
Tanya Kant@drhistorybrad This is my favourite visualisation to try and get my/ my students' heads around extreme (obscene?) wealth https://mkorostoff.github.io/1-pixel-wealth/?v=3
Lotneuv@drhistorybrad How property would be taxed then? Their billions are not income as clearly billionaires are not getting those billions - they own stuff others would pay billions for. They seem to be able to leverage those billions quite effecyively though. Any good pointers to look into?
Jo Lindsay Walton@drhistorybrad Scrooge McDuck has a song about it https://youtu.be/p9d8l-Gkweg?t=434
Cartoon - Scrooge McDuck and Money (Walt Disney, 1967) [remastered version]
Riley S. Faelan@drhistorybrad: Specifically, the black holes of the economy.
Ariaflame@drhistorybrad Which billion? The thousand million or the million million?
Lillian Violet@drhistorybrad
I'd like to posit we shouldn't "tax the rich" since that's already falling for right wing framing (good article about that here: https://jamesarobichaux.substack.com/p/the-collection-plate-narrative-of). We should be talking about the systems that give rise to these power structures and how to dismantle and prevent them, it's really not an issue of excess, it's an issue of the system being unequal by design. Death to billionaires is what I say.
I'd like to posit we shouldn't "tax the rich" since that's already falling for right wing framing (good article about that here: https://jamesarobichaux.substack.com/p/the-collection-plate-narrative-of). We should be talking about the systems that give rise to these power structures and how to dismantle and prevent them, it's really not an issue of excess, it's an issue of the system being unequal by design. Death to billionaires is what I say.
Merovius@drhistorybrad One way I contextualize the difference between a Billionaire and a Millionaire:
A Millionaire (depending on their age) probably can't retire just yet, if they want to live even somewhat comfortably.
A Billionaire can retire with a wealthy lifestyle and still have a Billion Dollars (or Euros) left. Like, a wealthy rest of their life is literally a rounding error.
@drhistorybrad I mean, this is ignoring capital gains for context. In reality, a Millionaire can probably retire on their capital gains, if they invest somewhat wisely.
👩🦯The Blind Fraggle@drhistorybrad I tell myself this, and I hope I'm right. When people talk about the rich being evil, they don't mean that they don't want people to be comfortable or happy. Sure, have a big house if that's what you want, eat nice food, wear nice clothing. Do what makes you happy as long as you're not willfully abusing the planet or other people. Just don't hoard more money than you could ever spend in a lifetime, and give back your fair share.
At least, I hope that's what people are saying.
At least, I hope that's what people are saying.
sezduck
MsMerope
Erlend Sogge Heggen@drhistorybrad I like to say:
The difference between a million and a billion dollars is roughly one billion dollars.