Well, it’s happened. Amazon’s CEO and founder, Jeff Bezos, is now the richest person ever. According to Bloomberg, Amazon’s recent stock rise means he’s now worth $150bn – outstripping what Bill Gates was worth in 1999.
It’s hard to actually imagine just how much money 150,000,000,000 actually is, as the figure is so ethereal. Don’t worry though, we’re going to put it into perspective.
1 x McDonald’s
The world’s leading fast-food chain has a market value of $129.9 billion, so Bezos would have another $20-odd billion to play about with afterwards.
Hell, he could use this extra cash to rebrand the fast food chain to Bezos Burgers.
150,000,000,000 x McDonald’s Cheeseburgers AKA Bezos Burgers
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That’d be 19.7 slabs of meat between bread for every human on the planet, providing them each with 5910 delicious calories.
Very droll. $150 billion is serious money though – what should he actually do with it?
So getting more serious, here’s one idea: he could visit his own website and maybe buy some of the things on there? You know, some things that could help the world?
Like what?
Well, just off the top of my head, that $150 billion could buy:
- 4,057,343,792 (~4.1 billion) sleeping bags
- As of December 2017, there were estimated 554,000 homeless people in America alone
- 6,833,712,984 (~6.8 billion) ultra-large mosquito nets
- More than one million people die from malaria every year, the majority of which are children under five
- 1,001,335,100,000 (~1 trillion) water purification tablets
- 844 million people worldwide don’t have clean water
- This lack of access to clean water leads to an estimated 801,000 children younger than five dying from diarrhoea each year
- 7,738,998,500,000 (~7.7 trillion) tampons
- In the UK – one of the world’s richest countries – 10 percent of 14 to 21 year olds can’t afford sanitary products
- Between 48 and 88 percent of girls in urban India use cloth during their period which is re-used without washing, as there’s no access to soap or clean water
- 1,000,333,444 (~1 billion) emergency month-long survival packs of food
- In 2016, it was estimated that around 815 million people – roughly 10.7 percent of the world – were suffering from chronic undernourishment in 2016
Fucking hell
Makes you feel a little bit ill, right? No one needs that much and, when you consider the problems that could be solved with that money, holding onto it becomes obscene and indefensible.
You know what? Screw folks in need, let’s just focus on getting the rich to the moon instead.
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