If $10,000 a day for 27,000 years sounds like a scam to you, I think you’re onto something.
In today’s video, I start out by talking about millions of dollars versus billions of dollars.
I’m going to write this part of the video out because I think it’s really, really important.
If I had a million dollars and spent $10,000 every day, I would run out of money in about 100 days. Just over three months of $10,000 daily spending.
If you had a BILLION dollars and spent $10,000 every day, you would run out of money in about 273 years. So, plenty of $10,000/day spending for you and the next couple of generations of your family, and that’s assuming no new money ever comes in.
But what about Elon Musk, estimated to be worth over $400 BILLION? Well, if he only had $100 billion he would have 27,000 years of spending $10,000 daily. Multiply that by four and you’re at over 100,000 years of spending, and there’d still be billions (PLURAL) left over. A few thousand years of spending $10,000 a day would be left over after spending down the first $400 billion.
And that sounds like a scam to me — one where we are all the suckers.
So I wanted to put that into written scale for everyone too, along with this from Reddit, putting it into scale of human history:
Remember to multiply all those billions by 100 and then by four to scratch at Musk’s hoarded wealth amount.
And for the more image inclined, (also from Reddit):
And finally in this section,
’s recent essay on the “morbidly rich”: https://substack.com/home/post/p-155189157I can’t decide if I like “morbidly rich” or “mortally rich” more, as I mention in the video at the top of this post.
I also briefly talked about how the health “care” industry doesn’t have a financial incentive to cure people
So, I wanted to make sure to include some links to that report from 2018 and the coverage it got.
CNBC coverage of the Goldman Sachs report from 2018: Goldman Sachs asks in biotech research report: ‘Is curing patients a sustainable business model?’
Redacted Goldman Sachs report: “PROFILES IN INNOVATION: Sizing the genome medicine opportunity”
Continued coverage of that report: WHYY/PBS: Are financial incentives holding back cures?
I also talked about public sector vs. private sector efficiency and the myths surrounding it. I used as an example that Medicare operates with a single-digit overhead, whereas private insurers and so-called Medicare Advantage plans operate with double-digit overheads. You can read more about how we’d save with Medicare for All in my essay “Why West Virginia Wins with Medicare for All,” an abridged version of which was also published at the Charleston Gazette-Mail.
The truth is that what conservatives currently point to as cases of Medicare’s “inefficiencies” are actually introduced by the ‘free market’ side of things with private insurers defrauding the American people.
Finally, I talked a bit about West Virginia’s budget, and wanted to include some sourcing for that:
Sean O’Leary tweet re: WV budget estimates:
Senator Jim Justice (R-WV) on Gov. Patrick Morrisey’s budget estimates, reported by WCHS8 & MetroNews Talkline:
And my conversation with
from December 2022 when then-Governor Jim Justice was bragging about the big surplus in West Virginia:Find me/us on social media:
Bluesky: @troynmiller.bsky.social
Twitter: @TroyNMiller
The Blue Ridge Breakdown YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@TheBlueRidgeBreakdown
And let us know where else you’d like to see this distributed!
As always, like, subscribe, share with your friends, and also weigh in with your own thoughts.
How would you describe the centi-billionaires who are running our country? Morbidly rich? Mortally rich?
Do you have a favorite way you’re going to use to help folks envision the difference between a million and a billion?
Feel free to answer any, all, or none of those questions — and we’ll do our part to keep doing this (while figuring out what exactly we are doing).
Thank you,
Troy
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