So how long would it take to earn a billion dollars if you earned $5,000 a day?
This was the premise of a post on Facebook that said it would take more years than have passed since Columbus sailed to the Americas.
That sounded like nonsense, so I pulled out the calculator and went to work.
$5,000 x 365 days = $1,825,000 a year.
547.944 years x $1,825,000 = $1,000,000,000.
Columbus set sail 527 years ago.
Pretty amazing numbers, but when you start applying them to today’s billionaires, it gets worse.
From Forbes 2019 400, Jeff Bezos was worth $114 Billion at the time. If Bezos only earned $5,000 a day (not an inconsiderable sum by any measure), it would take him 62,472 years to earn his current net worth.
Number 10 on the American list, Jim Walton, 51.6 Billion, would need 28,276 years to obtain his net worth.
Haters are going to hate, so before you start trying to justify this level of obscene wealth, please tell the worker making $15 an hour in an Amazon Fulfillment warehouse how Bezos wealth is justified.