In the last few days, I saw some ridiculous comments about accusing Bernie Sanders as a hypocrite because he is a “millionaire” and therefore no different from Bloomberg. According to some statistics, Sanders’ net worth is estimated to be about $2.5 million. Many homeowners in California who bought their home more than 20 years ago are about that “wealthy” and they don’t consider themselves rich. But that’s a whole different scale from a billionaire.
Bloomberg’s published net worth is about $64 billion. Let’s visualize that.
Let’s pick a convenient time to start, say the birth of Christ, year 0 in our calendar. Let’s say you started working in year 0 and you worked 40 hours a week, and your hourly wage was $15,000 per hour. — No, not Sanders’ proverbial 15 bucks an hour of minimum wage, but 15 thousand bucks an hour.
Right about now, you’d have earned $63 billion. There is no interest, inflation or any other factor involved here. Just 2020 years times 2080 work hours per year times $15,000 per hour.
$63 billion is a lot more than what a “run of the mill” millionaire like Bernie Sanders is worth.
Here’s how I used to explain it to audiences. A man gives his wife a million dollars and tells her to spend a thousand dollars a day and come back when she runs out. She’s back in less than 3 years. So he gives her a billion dollars, with the same instruction. He doesn’t see his wife again for almost 3 thousand years.
Ah, very nice.