Kay wrote a really good post about Numbers a while back. I want to expand and broaden that out just a bit.
I believe it is important to try to wrap our collective minds around the almost unfathomable scale of some of the numbers we hear bandied about every day. I’m also hoping that engaging in this exercise leads to a better understanding of how some of these numbers warp our perspective and our view of society/policy/politics.
Here is a post today fro on Bluesky:
Let’s dig in.
Per Claude - confirming what most of us already knew - Elon Musk is currently the wealthiest person in the world, worth approx. $645 billion (that’s $645,000,000,000). If his SpaceX public offering goes through, estimates are he will be worth over $1 trillion (that’s $1,000,000,000,000).
Now, a few thought exercises.
The median earnings for a full-time worker in the U.S. were approx. $62,600 in 2025 (just to be clear, that means half of all full-time workers in the U.S. made less than this amount). If the median worker kept their entire wages - with no taxes paid and no expenses to live), it would take approx. 10,300,000 years (that’s over 10 million years) to be worth $645 billion. It would take approx. 16,000,000 years (that’s 16 million years) to be worth $1 trillion.
In the 2024 election cycle, total combined spending on federal elections for President, Senate and U.S. House (including candidates, party committees, super PACs, and all other outside groups) was approx. $15.9 billion (lets round up a mere $100 million to $16 billion). Let’s assume a supporter only funds one side in each - and every - race (reasonable, no?). That would take $8 billion. At his current net worth, $8 billion is 1.2% of Musk’s net worth. at $1 trillion, it would be 0.8%. Basically, just one multi-billionaire - Elon Musk - could influence the outcome of every single federal election every election cycle forever without putting a dent in his personal fortune. Just fyi, Forbes estimates there are currently 15 United States citizens who are worth over $100 billion (combined worth over $3.2 trillion) - each of whom could do what Elon Musk could do without materially affecting their wealth or lifestyle.
The best estimate for what it would cost annually to feed people who are food insecure in the U.S. (i.e., hungry) is approx. $18-$30 billion. That equates to less than 1% of the combined wealth of those centi-billionaires in the U.S. Again, combined, they could end hunger in the U.S. without materially affecting their wealth or lifestyle.
Now, let’s take a quick look at U.S. government spending.
The U.S. spent approx. $6.75 trillion in its last fiscal year 2024 (Oct 2023-Sep 2024). This includes everything - military, Social Security, Medicare/Medicaid, and everything else. The population of the U.S. in 2024 was approx. 335 million people. That means the U.S. government spent approx. $20,000 per person.
The U.S. spent approx. $70-$80 billion on foreign aid in fiscal 2024. That amounts to only about 1.2% of total U.S. spending in fiscal 2024.
When you hear politicians saying we can’t afford to spend $1 billion here or $1 billion there, we need to understand that $1 billion is approx. .015% of total federal spending and approx. $3 (yes - 3 dollars) per person.
On the flip side, estimates are that approx. $650 billion of taxes owed goes uncollected (or almost 10% of our gov’t’s total spending). That’s also around $2,000 every year that every person in the U.S. is forever on the hook for because wealthy people cheat.
The numbers in our society have gotten so big that we have trouble truly processing what they mean and what their impact is in our society and in our government.
I believe it is imperative for us to find a way to make all of this more understandable. Perhaps adding a “per person” number on all of our government spending? Adding percentages to spending numbers and to budget cuts when they are proposed (for example, destroying U.S. Aid - which had an annual budget of approx. $20 billion - potentially reduced our government spending by around 0.3%)?
To me, two things stick out.
Back to LOLGOP’s Bluesky post, inequality that has resulted in centi-billionaires, more than almost anything I can think of, is destroying the fabric of our society;
It is critical to educate Americans on the relative meaning of our government spending and the “numbers” impact of certain spending/cutting decisions so we can better assess actual impacts on our lives of those decisions:
For example, doesn’t investing an additional $80 billion in the IRS over ten years (which Biden and the Democrats did through the Inflation Reduction Act and which was recently “clawed back by Trump and Republicans) to catch tax cheats and collect more taxes owed make total sense? After all, the additional $8 billion per year is around 0.12% of our total annual gov’t spending and around $24 per person per year.
Numbers. So easy to read but sometimes so hard to understand.
