Jeff Bezos is now the richest person in the world. Reed Saxon/AP Photo By Andrew D. Hwang , College of the Holy Cross The world’s wealthiest are prospering. As of February 2017, there were about 2,000 billionaires in the world . This micro-elite controls over US$7.6 trillion , an increase of 18 percent from 2016. A billionaire’s spending power is difficult to grasp, both because most people do not correctly intuit large numbers , and because a billion dollars far outstrips most people’s experience. What does a household budget look like to a billionaire? To find out, let’s scale down a billionaire’s income to $50,000, the median American income , adjusting budget items proportionally. A year in the life of Joe Billionaire To start, we need to estimate a billionaire’s annual income. In the 30 years from 1987 to 2016, Bill and Melinda Gates amassed about $120 billion. This figure represents $80 billion in net worth and $40 bill...
Comments
Post a Comment