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You vs. A Billionaire: compare your income

65 pointsby 0xedbalmost 3 years ago

21 comments

thepasswordisalmost 3 years ago
I absolutely hate stuff like this.<p>My net worth has grown substantially in the last several years, however my <i>income</i> has actually gone <i>down</i> in that time.<p>So do I have an income of millions of dollars? I haven&#x27;t sold anything that has appreciated (and I don&#x27;t intend to).<p>Elon Musk&#x27;s <i>net worth</i> may have increased, and most certainly Elon Musk is much, much richer than I am, <i>and</i> has a higher income, but this shell game of conflating &quot;income&quot; and &quot;net worth&quot; is just stupid.<p>There are examples here like:<p>&quot;If you buy a donut, thats like Elon buying a dunkin donuts franchise!&quot;<p>Yeah, except I don&#x27;t sell property or land to buy <i>donuts</i>. How much money does Elon actually take per year in <i>income</i> is the relevant question here.
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eulers_secretalmost 3 years ago
Since I&#x27;m unemployed, I just put in &#x27;0&#x27; (not quite true, I own some dividend stocks lol); every comparison was just infinity (∞).<p>Also the scrolling is a bit broken on Firefox on Linux.
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stanmancanalmost 3 years ago
This doesn&#x27;t seem to account for the cost of living; living off $100&#x2F;day in San Francisco might very well result in a lower quality of life than living off of $5&#x2F;day in somewhere else in the world.<p>The general premise still stands of course.<p>I&#x27;m curious; are there any organizations where donations help build regions economies? One would think that if a region relied on donations to survive then, without change, they&#x27;d continue relying on donations which isn&#x27;t a great long term solution. The ideal solution seems to be helping these regions jump start and build their economies through education and financial support. If people can afford to go to school and get an education then hopefully they are able to start moving their local community and economy forward.<p>Tough problems to solve, anyone know if there&#x27;s any good books on the subject? I know there&#x27;s nothing I can do to help but I&#x27;d be interesting in learning more about the problem and potential solutions.
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nickstinematesalmost 3 years ago
Website scrollbar thing is completely broken in latest Firefox on Windows. I get 2 scrollbars and have to scroll the 2nd one manually for the effect to work.
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hsbauauvhabzbalmost 3 years ago
Can we tag this ‘thinly veiled website asking for donations’? I dont mind donating, but I don’t like getting sales pitches the way the website did. It’s cheap and nasty.
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kortillaalmost 3 years ago
Moron confuses increase in net worth with income, news at 11.<p>By this token, anyone who owns a house probably made a $100k+ extra in income the last couple of years.
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ss108almost 3 years ago
This demonstrates something I kept say while people were dunking on Bloomberg for spending a bunch of money to try to get the Dem nomination in 2020 were being silly; for him, it was like the equivalent of buying new furniture or taking a vacation. He paid that kind of money to have a non-zero chance at becoming POTUS, and probably had a decent-enough time working on it. Made perfect sense.
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jaqalopesalmost 3 years ago
This is a neat data visualization but ultimately unpersuasive. The idea is that I am much richer than someone earning $1.90&#x2F;day (I am), and that in consequence I should donate $5 of my money to help that poor person. But why ask me? Why not ask Elon Musk, the presented point of comparison, to donate $2,000,000, which as this site points out is worth less to him than $5 is to me? Not only would he be giving up less, he&#x27;d be helping 400,000x as many people as me.<p>It genuinely sickens me that people let billionaires walk all over the rest of humanity like this. Musk and his ilk could single-handedly transform the economic prospects of whole communities in poor countries. I can&#x27;t. So why am I the bad guy for not donating the $5 I want to spend on a coffee to get me through my workday?
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billybuckwheatalmost 3 years ago
I really don&#x27;t need a website to know that I make&#x2F;have at my disposal <i>far</i> less money than any billionaire. Or even millionaire.
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alliaoalmost 3 years ago
it&#x27;s quite a fun thought experiment but the guy really needs some lessons in economics.<p>imagine billionaires cashed up all their assets, I doubt they&#x27;d get the full amount, probably 15% of their way into cashing it will crumple the rest due to market confidence etc
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phillipcarteralmost 3 years ago
Ooof, I did not like this site. It feels like it&#x27;s trying to take away from the hilariously disproportionate wealth of Elon Musk by shifting the focus to &quot;the world&quot;, with the implied message being &quot;see, you don&#x27;t have it so bad!&quot;. Nice deflection.
elil17almost 3 years ago
In addition to GiveWell (which I definitely support), you can support politicians who want to make people like Musk pay their fair share.
gumbyalmost 3 years ago
I don’t understand the underlying math. Musk’s net worth went up by $121B yet he couldn’t afford to buy Twitter for 1&#x2F;3 of that?
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bergentyalmost 3 years ago
I don’t think the numbers are right. If you make $59,000 you are not in the global top 1%.
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hatwarealmost 3 years ago
I put in $0 and got infinity for every answer.<p>I&#x27;m more of an undefined kind of guy.
nostromoalmost 3 years ago
&gt; In 2021, Elon Musk&#x27;s net worth grew by an estimated $121 billion.<p>And it&#x27;s dropped by more than that in 2022... So I guess we should all be happy we&#x27;ve made billions more than Elon this year.
rob_calmost 3 years ago
kinda broken in firefox, nice try though
engineer_22almost 3 years ago
Tl;Dr: you are extremely wealthy compared to the world&#x27;s poorest
davidguettaalmost 3 years ago
doesn&#x27;t work on my firefox
tannhauser23almost 3 years ago
So I get that this is a click-baity way to get people to donate to people living in extreme poverty. But why compare yourself to billionaires? I&#x27;m not Elon Musk, and I&#x27;m cool with that. I haven&#x27;t started multiple industry-changing companies. If I start the next Paypal, Tesla, AND SpaceX, I sure hope I am worth many billions - because my companies would be worth a ton.
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neotropealmost 3 years ago
It’s fantastic that Elon is so wealthy. He deserves it. The world needs more hard core engineers leading breakout innovations and stirring things up.