MONEY

What You Could Buy With $433B

Do you really understand how much money that is?

Photo by Pixabay: https://www.pexels.com/photo/copper-colored-coin-lot-259165/

As our billionaire oligarchs take office, I found myself thinking, do I even understand what $433B is? Does anyone?

Here’s a list of what some things in the world have cost in recent years. Ask yourself if you’d rather have them, or if you’re happy that increasingly the world’s wealth is owned by the top 1 percent of the global population.

First, a look at some of the world’s wealthiest people, as calculated at Forbes’s “Real-Time Billionaire List.” Please note that real time means just that; I’m pulling these numbers while I write this, but when you read it, they might be different by a few billion or so.

1. Elon Musk, $433.9B
2. Jeff Bezos, $239.4B
3. Mark Zuckerberg, $211.8B
4. Larry Ellison, $204.6B
5. Bernard Arnault & Family, $181.3B

Here is what $433 billion looks like:

$433,000,000,000.

Elon Musk is currently 53. If he lives to the current U.S. life expectancy figure of 79, he will have 26 more years. How much money will he have to scrape by on per year if he lives that long?