Hi Ranty Nation!  Ranty McRantyson har agin!

Ah, thunk it dun be time to have nutter Back to Basics (B2B) talk.  In the last Back to Basics article, B2B, Pt 3: Whut’s the “Big Deal” Bout “Whut’s Money”?, we talked bout why its important to unnerstand whut money is.  An ah also told y’all ah’d talk bout how much money a billion dollars is so we’all be able to unnerstand just how ridiculously much money that is, so har we go!

We’all dun bin talkin bout money.  An we’all also bin talkin bout how much more money rich folk have than we regular folk.  But ah don’t rightly know that we really unnerstand whut it means to have a “billion dollars”.  So ah thunk ah’d talk bout how much money that is so we’all dun be startin at the same place fur future articles.

Anyhoo, let’s start talkin bout differnt ways to thunk bout a billion dollars!

Let’s Start wit a “Picture”

Let’s all thunk bout a billion dollars tall stack of money.  Ah know that the purtiest an one of the rarest US money bills dun be the $100 bill wit ol Ben Franklin on its face.  Well, when ah dun say it’s “one of the rarest” bills, ah mean that us regular folk don’t get much of a chance to see a “Benjamin”!

Y’see, if’n y’all stack $100 bills, one on top of the other 20 high ($100 times 20 = $2000), it’ll be bout 1/8″ tall.  Now that’s a lot of money.  Whut a lot of regular folk make in a month!

If’n y’all take a $1,000,000 stack of $100 bills , that’ll be bout this tall:

$1,000,000 / $2,000 (1/8″ tall stack) = 500
500 $2000 stacks = 500 * 1/8″ tall = 62.5″ tall or 5.21′ tall.

Now, let’s make a $1 billion stack of $100 bills.  A $1 billion is $1,000 million.  So:

5.21′ (a $1 million stack) * 1000 = 5210 feet tall or ~1 mile tall (5280 feet)!

So, $1 billion is a stack of $100 bills a MILE tall!

A Billion Dollars Compared Wit Whut “We, the People” Make

Well, that puts a physicalness to how much money $1 billion is, but how does it compare to, say, whut a normal everday Merican family dun make?

In ~2020 money, the median family income dun be bout $60,000/year (a fancy way of sayin, “line all families up from poorest to richest an the one in the middle dun be the ‘median’ family”).  The real number be a bit higher, but that’s a good all round number fur estimatin. — https://bit.ly/3eG1StU

Let’s play sum mathimacation games.

$1,000,000,000 / $60,000 = Whut over 16,000 “median income families” dun make in a year!

Fur a “median income family” to make $1 billion would take over 16,000 years!

Jus fur comparison, remember the “median income family” in the USofA dun make bout $60,000 per year.  If’n y’all stack $60,000 in $100 bills it’ll only be 3.75 INCHES tall!  That’s 1/16000 of a billion dollars.  Phew!  A billion dollars shure is a lot of money!

If’n y’all be at or below the poverty line (bout 20% of the population right now durin the COVID-19 pandemic, $12K fur one person, $26K fur a family of 4), it’ll take y’all’s family bout:  $1 billion / $26,000 (family of 4) = more than 83,000 years.  On the other hand, it also means that $1 billion is wurth the annual pay of more than 83,000 Merican families! — https://bit.ly/3mWyh22

Jeff Bezos an Amazon.com vs “We, the People”

Jus to be clear, Jeff Bezos is wurth bout $200 billion dollars (remember that’s at least 200 times more’n he cud possibly spend).  An he’s dun gotten bout $75 billion richer cuz his Amazon.com stock dun gone up since the beginnin of the COVID-19 pandemic.  Amazon.com dun has bout 800,000 employees.  If’n y’all do the mathimacation, y’all’d see that Jeff Bezos has gotten over $90,000 richer per employee in the last 8+ months alone.

Jus to be clear, Jeff Bezos, witout doin any wurk, dun got $90,000 richer fur each employee Amazon.com had wurkin fur it.  Them employees ain’t seen none of that riches.

Let’s look at it nutter way.  Amazon.com, for 2019, made bout $13 billion dollars in profits (that’s whut money was left over after all Amazon.com’s expenses were paid, or whut the tax folk call “taxable income”).  If’n y’all divide that up, y’all git over $16,000 in profit per employee. In 2018, an average Amazon employee made almost $30,000 per year.  Knowin that, fur each $30,000 an average employee got paid, Amazon.com, the company, stuck over $15,000 in its own pocket.

Whut Does This Mean Fur Regular Folk?

Jus to be clear, that means that Amazon.com made over half as much money as the employees, fur the wurk the employee dun did!  The employees dun did the wurk, but Amazon.com, the company, made at least 1/2 as much witout doin any wurk!  An this kinda stuff is happinin at corporations all round the country!

Ah ain’t sayin that Amazon.com shouldn’t git any money or that the employees shud get all the money.  Whut ah am sayin is that companies ain’t payin they employees a fair share of whut they wurk dun be wurth!

At the same time Amazon made that much money, they only paid bout 1.2% in federal income taxes fur that thirteen billion dollars.  That’s probly bout 1/10 to 1/15 the tax rate their average employee paid in federal income taxes!

Now that jus ain’t right!

Whut Now?

Since the 1970s, wages dun basically remained flat ($1 back then dun be wurth bout $5 today (Inflation calculator)) fur the bottom 80%, an even declined fur the bottom 25-40%!  Fur a refresher on how companies dun be not payin theys employees fur they’all’s productivity, y’all can go back an read Part 3 of this har series: B2B, Pt 3: Whut’s the “Big Deal” Bout “Whut’s Money”?

We’all need to jaw bout the reason employees dun had theys power taken away frum them.  An in the next B2B article, “B2B, Pt 5: Whut’s Negotiatin, Part A?“, ah’m gonna talk a bit bout negotiatin an how to make thangs more fair.

Ranty McRantyson signin off… til next time!