I’ve always liked the seconds one because time is something anyone can relate to, and the gap there is staggering. Of course then there’s a trillion seconds, which is almost 32,000 years.
What’s the difference between a million dollars and a billion dollars? About a billion dollars.
Imagine life was a game. You lived for 2025 years. You worked 260 days / year. You made the median US salary.
You would need to relive that process 3,145 times to match an Oligarch.
That amount of wealth is unethical while humanity suffers. No one can really fathom “1b dollars.”
Go to your local big box store and find one of the aisles that’s got pallets loaded up on the upper shelves.
Those pallets are 48" square and the shelves are generally 36" tall though sometimes they’re taller.
A pallet of 100 dollar bills, stacked neatly and put in one of the 36" shelves would be about 125 million dollars.
You’d need 8 of them to get to a billion.
1 million seconds is about 11 days.
1 billion seconds is about 32 years.
I’ve always liked the seconds one because time is something anyone can relate to, and the gap there is staggering. Of course then there’s a trillion seconds, which is almost 32,000 years.
What’s the difference between a million dollars and a billion dollars? About a billion dollars.
If you worked at an hourly rate of $1000, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, you’ll need to work for 114 years to earn a billion dollars.
In a more “realistic” scenario, $17/h, 10 hours per day, no weekends or holidays, it would take you more than 16000 years.