A trillion dollars second by second.I came across this image...
A trillion dollars second by second.
I came across this image looking at an old presentation I used in a class on Globalization. It comes from an example Manfred Steger uses in an introductory text to globalization and the 2008 global financial crisis (GFC). Needless to say with the continued expanse of wealth, the image and the anecdote is still potent and relevant.
Simply put, it is easy to not take the enormous wealth we hear about seriously. What really is the difference between a millionaire and a billionaire. After a billion dollars, is a trillion really that much more significant? The answer becomes more distinct if you think about simply paying out these huge sums. If you pay someone a dollar every second, it will take 12 full days until you have paid out 1 million dollars. Using the same method of a dollar a second would take you a staggering 32 years to reach a billion. Finally, to reach a trillion dollars would take an incomprehensible 31,546 years. Paying a dollar a second, it would take you 3583 years to pay Jeff Bezos all the wealth he has accrued.
You can use these figures when surveying the number of billionaires in the world, the estimated 614 in the USA with a combined wealth of 2.95 trillion. China is close behind the US. The map below provides a neat visual representation of global wealth and where it is concentrated. The GFC wiped 2 trillion dollars off of the global economy. In the light of this exercise above, this seems all the more edifying.
