Wealth, shown to scale

Wealth shown to scale

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$1,000

$63,179 (Median US household income)

$1 million

$1 billion

$139 billion (wealth of Jeff Bezos)

$80 million

Jeff is so wealthy, that it is quite literally unimaginable.

We rarely see wealth inequality represented to scale. This is part of the reason Americans consistently under-estimate the relative wealth of the super rich.

Every 10 pixels you scroll is $5 million.

OK, we're coming up on the end now.

Lol, just kidding, we're about ⅓ of the way. Keep scrolling though, there's more to see.

Let's put this wealth in perspective by comparing it to some familiar things.

All the money you will ever earn in your entire life from the day you are born until the day you die (about $1.7 million)

Annual cost of health care for a family of four

Annual pay of amazon warehouse worker.

Annual cost to house every single homeless veteran.

Annual cost of chemotherapy for all cancer patients ($9 billion)

In 2018, Jeff Bezos made $9 billion in about 40 days.

Even the fortunes of very rich people are dwarfed by the incomprehensible wealth of the 0.0001%.

Wealth of Goldman Sachs CEO David Solomon ($50 million)

Wealth of Beyoncé ($400 million)

Wealth of Apple CEO Tim Cook ($625 million)

Lifetime earnings of a doctor, on average ($6.7 million)

Lifetime earnings of a lawyer, on average ($4 million)

Lifetime earnings of a hedge fund manager, on average ($84 million)

These people may see themselves as fabulously rich, and often oppose policies aimed at reducing inequality.

But many have not fully grasped the enormous gulf between themselves and the super rich.

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Mark Zuckerberg<br>($82 billion)

Mark<br>Zuckerberg<br>($82 billion)

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$200 million

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We can have a world in which wealthy people exist, without handing nearly all money to the super rich.

No single human needs or deserves this much wealth.

400 richest Americans ($2.96 trillion)

$80 million

Jeff Bezos may be insanely rich, but it is a drop in the ocean compared to the combined wealth of his peers. The 400 richest Americans own about $3 trillion, which is more than the bottom 60% of Americans.

400 people

0.0%

Bottom 60% (Scroll Down)

A trillion dollars is such a large figure, that you might as well say "eleventy gajillion zillion dollars." So in this section, we will try to understand the scale of this figure by looking at what could be accomplished with various chunks of this wealth.

As we proceed, try to keep in mind: all of this wealth is controlled by a group so small, that they could fit on a single 747 airplane—with 260 seats left over.

What could we do with 3% of this money?

3%

Test Every American for Coronavirus

As of this writing, testing in the United States falls far short of what is needed to re-open the economy. By some estimates, sufficiently ramping up testing to around 30 million tests per week would cost around $100 billion total, or about 3% of the wealth currently controlled by the 400 richest Americans.

3%

Permanently Eradicate Malaria

Malaria is one of the worst infectious diseases ever visited on mankind, possibly killing more people than any other infectious disease in history. In the 20th century alone, malaria killed more people than the Black Death.

Coronavirus has shown us all the horrors of living with a deadly disease. Sadly, for much of the world, this horror was a constant feature of daily life even before coronavirus.

COVID-19 deaths January to April 2020<br>(About 200,000)

Malaria deaths January to April 2020<br>(about 135,000).

Ebola deaths in all of human history combined (about 15,000)

These figures are even more shocking when you learn that malaria overwhelmingly kills children; around two-thirds of malaria deaths each year are children under five. That's around 285,000 children.

Children under five killed by malaria each year (Scroll Down)

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All of these deaths are preventable. Treating and preventing malaria is a well understood science, universally practiced in the developed world.

It is estimated that malaria could be globally eradicated by 2030 for a cost around $1.84 per at-risk person per year, or around $100 billion total. This would be around 3% of the wealth currently possessed by the 400 richest Americans.

Around 800 children will die of malaria today. A small group of super rich people could stop it for a sum of money so small that they would likely never even notice its absence. But they choose not to.

What could we do with 5% of this money?

5.1%

Provide $1,200 to every American household.

The recent coronavirus stimulus was the largest ever passed by congress. It was financed entirely through deficit spending, which will be repaid by taxpayers for generations. The burden of repaying this debt could be erased in an instant with a tax on the super rich so small that they would not even feel it.

The wealth of 400 Americans could have financed the entire CARES act, including the...