Kimaya Khurana - Week 8 - Billions
A billion is a number a human brain can't comprehend.
One million seconds is about 11 days. One billion seconds is 11574 days. That's 31 years.
One billion one hundred dollar bills stacked is approximately 3,583 feet. The tallest building in the world is 2,717 feet tall. This is almost 1,000 feet taller.
If you were to put a $100 bill into the bank account everyday, it would take you 27,397.26 years to reach $1 billion according to Berkeley’s study on “How Big is a Billion?”.
To count to a billion, this would take 95.1 years. And this is going at an average rate of 3 seconds for each number, no brekas. Even 898,595,276.
The equators circumference in 24,792.5 miles. To take a billion steps, this would cause you to walk approximately 15.278 times around the equator. I'm sure most of us can't even comprehend walking 50 miles.
Even if you were to spend $10,000 everyday, it would take 274 years to spend a billion dollars.
Now putting all of this in perspective, let's look at some economic issues.
It costs roughly $40 billion per year to end global hunger by 2030 according to the World Food Program USA.
To rebuild Gaza, it would take between $70 and $80 billion according to the United Nations.
To save endangered species, it costs a little over $1.5 billion per year according to the Center for Conservation Innovation.
Elon Musk has $491 billion. I'm going to let that speak for itself.
Millionaires are ethical, it is the product of your own hard work. But no billionaires are ethical. You can't even spend all of that money. What is the need? No person needs that much money. If you earned 10k everyday and didn't spend ANY of it, it would still take 250 years to reach 1 billion. This is exploitation. The embodiment of greed.
I absolutely love the way that you start and continue your blog. With the short sentences that make up entire lines and paragraphs, you effectively utilize them to make your point and emphasize the importance of each statement. The numbers and facts that you mention throughout your blog are mind boggling, and definitely something that I simply cannot comprehend. I really like how you mention money and how all of your "fun facts" are centered around money, as this helps emphasize your point about the amount of money that Elon Musk has. it draws attention to the sheer amount of money that he has in comparison to other staggering numbers, as well as the way that you let the numbers speak for itself. I also agree with your stance on billionaires. Personally, I aspire to be a millionaire someday, or at least earn enough money to a point where I don't have to worry about things like expenses. However, I never want to be a billionaire. Not only would I never know what to do with that money, there are so many other people out there than need it much more than me at that point. Keeping all of that money is pointless, especially when there are others in need. If I had the same amount of money as Elon Musk, I would do the right thing and help others with it, including working towards ending global hunger, rebuilding Gaza, and fixing housing issues among the million other problems in our country.
ReplyDeleteHi, Kimaya. I really enjoyed how you built up the insanity of billions for most of your blog before actually connecting it to billionaires. I think that it creates a buildup of how extraordinary a billion dollars is and then adding fuel to the fire with Elon Musk’s whopping 491 billion (!!). Though I disagree with you a little on how you said “millionaires are ethical” and that “it is the product of your own hard work.” When I first think of a “millionaire” I immediately imagine someone with a net worth of one or two, maybe three, million dollars. But, unless we’re being super specific, in which case they would be multimillionaires (but still millionaire in the title, so maybe it doesn’t even really matter?), those with hundreds of millions of dollars are also millionaires. And I wouldn’t argue those many millions come from their “own hard work.” Even if someone only has maybe a couple pathetic millions lying around, that doesn’t mean that they earned it. I liked how you talked about hoarding wealth as exploitation and the embodiment of greed. On the topic of Elon Musk, I remember how he used his wealth and power to basically buy himself a government position. Of course, wealth doesn’t just buy material items but also status and opportunities. Going back to the “product of your own hard work” I would also like to add that nepo babies who are born with millions (and sometimes billions) of dollars haven’t done anything to "deserve" their fortune. It’s just genetic lottery. And as the Prince of France says, “big money never comes clean.”
ReplyDeleteHi Kimaya, I love how you began with defining just how much a billion is. By utilizing different examples of what a billion is, it highlights the problem of billionaires in society. The examples you shared remind me of how some billionaires donate so little of their money, the equivalent of an average citizen donating cents to a charity. We are supposed to be grateful for the donation but seeing the insane wealth that one cannot even spend and how “no person needs that money,” it creates this understanding that it is just publicity to improve the billionaire’s reputation with as little money as possible. When I heard that “$40 billion per year” can “end global hunger,” it made me think of the potential benefits the money could be spent on. It enables the audience to question the society they are in and if the economic system of capitalism should even allow people to be this capitalist. A person who has “$491 billion” simply does not make logical sense because it is 491 more times the amount of wealth than a single billion. Ending the blog with “the embodiment of greed” sums up the entire argument in a few concise but concrete words to describe the absurdity of the situation that America has led itself to.
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