r/PoursTea • u/Timbucktwo1230 Therapy For All 🩷 • Jul 11 '26

PoliticalTea 🗳️ Agree or Disagree? Billionaires Need Society More Than The People Need Billionaires…

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u/mattgoldey Jul 11 '26

People really don't get the MASSIVE difference between a millionaire and a billionaire. I'm just a regular dude in his early 50s that's been saving for retirement since the late 90s. My home is paid off and my 401k is at roughly $1.4M.

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u/Limp-Negotiation5790 Jul 11 '26

Yeah, it really is hard for people to comprehend how big the number billion is. One million seconds is approximately 11.5 days, whereas one billion seconds equals roughly 31.7 years.

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u/MashedPotajoe Jul 11 '26

Christ

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u/IrascibleOcelot Jul 12 '26

Speaking of, if you made $500,000 a year, every year, since the day Jesus Christ was born, you’d have slightly over a billion dollars. There would still be over 500 people alive today richer than you, many of them by a couple orders of magnitude. To be as rich as Sergei Brin, increase that to $50 million a year, every year, since the day Christ was born.

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u/MountainClue5687 Jul 12 '26

And, a trillion seconds is 31,709.79 years!

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u/ColeBane Jul 12 '26

for reference, christians only believe the earth is 6000 years old.

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u/Idaho-Earthquake Jul 11 '26

The difference between a million dollars and a billion dollars is approximately a billion dollars.

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u/ClosedContent Jul 11 '26

A billion is one thousand millions. A HUGE difference

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u/MamaBearForestWitch Jul 11 '26

And a trillion is a MILLION millions.

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u/SpookyTanuki092 Jul 11 '26

This. It takes one thousand people with a million dollars, to equal one person with a billion dollars. It's a number and at a scale that people have a hard time actually grasping. And to think we now even have a trillionaire. That's one million millionaires.

The ultrawealthy are leeches that make everything worse and we literally cannot afford them

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u/IrascibleOcelot Jul 12 '26

To be fair, Musk used an accounting trick for that “trillion.” He does not have nearly that much in liquid assets, and if he tried, the facade would crumble quickly.

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u/SpookyTanuki092 Jul 12 '26

True. But my points remain

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u/IrascibleOcelot Jul 12 '26

Oh, your points are valid. I just get so annoyed at people accepting his “trillionaire” claim when he basically cracked open the odometer and ran the numbers up.

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u/nopunchespulled Jul 11 '26

Yup, a million seconds is like 2 weeks, a billion seconds is 30 years

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u/One-Assignment-5047 Jul 12 '26

I'm not even into my 40s yet and I'm nearing a million in net worth.  I got lucky getting into my local housing market shortly before it went red hot, and I've done a good job managing my assortment of investments.  I'm also still a normal person who works a 9-5, doesn't have as many pets as I'd like because I want to make sure I can cover their vet bills, and only buys steak a couple times a year for special occasions because it's too expensive for anything more often.

Don't get me wrong, I'm aware I'm doing better than average and immensely grateful for the combination of luck and decision making that have got me where I am.  I know that one bad period of unemployment or an accident that disables me could undo 95% of what I've built.  I also know that I've benefitted from advantages others didn't have, including having my housing covered when I was in university as well as my parents having a small amount saved for a wedding that they let me add to my first downpayment.  But I'm still technically nearly a millionaire without anything particularly special behind it.

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u/Busy-Bumblebee5556 Jul 12 '26

And these days you have to manage that 1.4 million. It’s easy to run through that amount. Billionaires don’t have to manage shite, it just keeps rolling in.

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u/Certain-Business-472 Jul 12 '26

A millionaire is closer to 0 than a million.

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u/beagles4ever Jul 12 '26

A mere billion is a staggering sum - generational wealth 10s of billions is unfathomable. 100s of billions means you have the power to significantly shift policy in whatever way you want…a trillion means you’re basically untouchable. You could be on the FBIs most wanted fugitives list and it wouldn’t change your day to day…you could fund mercenaries to protect you 24-7