you are now rich
Let's do a thought exercise.
Once, a friend of mine described to me the plot of a book she had read. In the book, a young woman and her little sister whom she took care of get a letter summoning them to some random guy's will reading. They go and find out that this random, old man that they never met has put in his will that, aside for the houses and interests of his direct family, they have inherited everything he owned. It adds up to over 10 billion dollars total.
My friend, when she told me about this, asked me what I would spend 10 billion dollars on. I looked at her incredulously. I said, "I literally could not spend 10 billion dollars in my lifetime even if I tried." She had scoffed and been like "Oh, I can." I replied, "No. You can't. Literally no one can." She didn't believe me. So we did a thought exercise.
I said, "Alright, tell me what you would spend 10 billion dollars on then." She went on to describe how she would buy a house each for herself, her mother, and her younger brother. I asked what kind of house. She said, "fuck it, a million dollar mansions each." She told me what kind of cars she would buy, the gaming setup she would make, the amount of clothes she would buy, a boat perhaps, other things. When she finished tallying everything off, I told her, "Great, you have spent half a billion dollars. You still have 9.5 billion to go." I had been adding up approximate costs the entire time she was talking, so I was certain of the numbers. She was aghast.
She tried upping the numbers. 10 million dollar houses for her family and friends, an island, a castle in France. I dutifully looked up the prices. She didn't even make it halfway through the 10 billion before she gave up. She told me she hadn't realized how much 10 billion dollars was. I told her most people don't. It is literally an unfathomable amount of money. She was silent for a moment. Then she said to me, "There are companies worth hundreds of billions of dollars. I work for a company worth hundreds of billions of dollars. 10 billion isn't shit to them, but I could change the lives of everyone I know, even the people I don't like."
I said, "Yeah. I know." She looked at me. She said, "I get paid less than 20 dollars an hour. What is Jeff Bezos even doing with all that money?" I told her, "Nothing, really. Like I said, one person can't spend that much money in their lifetime, even if that person is buying countries. At most, lobbying. Buying out the competition. Things like that." She started crying.
This completely changed her worldview. Until then, she hadn't realized how much a billion dollars really was. It was crushing. I sympathized, but I had always known what a billion really meant. Maybe not literally, but at the time, I was the one in charge of our budgeting (we were roomates) and my mother had raised me to be frugal and conscious of pricing. I measured money by what I could buy with it. In fact, one of my favorite things to say was "do you know how many triple A games I could buy with that?" before providing an exact number. I knew how much a million dollars would change our lives, let alone one thousand times that.
So what's the point? Why am I saying this? Well, it's simple. I want you to try to spend 10 billion dollars. Make a list of everything you want or need. Look up how much those things cost. Add it all up. How much is it? How much frivolous bullshit do you have to make up just trying to get close? Think about how much you would actually be content with. Look at the difference. Is it not staggering and awful that you could probably afford your perfect life half a dozen times over?
My friend, after she was done crying, was angry. So livid that she was trembling with it. It was the same anger I had been simmering with since I was 14. She told me, "I hate billionaires." I told her, "You should." We were two people who had been poor all our lives. Money didn't mean shit to us, not really, but it defined our lives nonetheless. We didn't want much. A nice, safe place to live. Never having to worry about food. A couple luxuries like all my books in physical form and being able to buy a video game when it first comes out without wincing. It is devastating to know that we are mere atoms looking up at galaxies. Not so much out of envy, but pure, blistering upset at the wastfulness of such a thing, the greed of it. I know horrid, truly awful people (shout out to my evil aunt) who are more generous than that.
But many people don't understand that, even the ones that know billionaires are bad. Thus, the thought exercise. When you put those kinds of numbers into a practical, measureable format like "what can I buy with this?", the scale of it becomes easier to conceptualize. My thinking is that there are probably people out there like my friend, who has always been in favor of eating the rich, but didn't truly understand the difference in wealth. Perhaps this story, and the thought exercise that comes with it, might be a revelation for them too. I don't know, but surely I have to try. It costs me nothing. Why wouldn't I?