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………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………(almost there)………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………(I lied — now you’re almost there)………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………. ←There’s the last dot.<h1 id="a58c">Trillion?</h1>Crazy, right? That’s what one billion dollars would look like IF each dot were $10,000.Remember how I said Jeff Bezos has an estimated net worth of 177 billion dollars? We would have to replicate the number of dots on this screen 177x times over to visualize Jeff Bezos’s net worth.177x TIMES. Who has time to scroll through that many dots? To no surprise, the number one trillion has also started to spring up more in the news.For example, <a href="https://www.npr.org/2020/08/19/903858871/apple-is-1st-2-trillion-american-company">Apple recently became the first company</a> valued at$ 2 trillion after hitting $1 trillion in valuation only two years prior. President Joe Biden passed the COVID-19 stimulus relief package, the <a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2021/03/11/biden-1point9-trillion-covid-relief-package-thursday-afternoon.html">American Rescue Plan</a>, which cost$ 1.9 trillion, while a bipartisan group of US senators is proposing a $1.2 trillion infrastructure plan.If this article was about visualizing what one trillion dollars looked like, instead of one billion, you would have had to scroll down ten million dots! Y’all, we only just looked at 10,000 dots!You would have had to scroll down a similar length of dots one thousand times over to see what one trillion looked like.The next time you see the number, billion, you’ll probably have greater respect and appreciation (or disgust) for the massive scale of the number and its impact on the world around us.Quy is a retail & digital commerce expert. Subscribe to his <a href="https://quyma.substack.com/">free newsletter</a> here for his latest insights.</article></body>

Here’s What One Billion Dollars Look Like

Visualizing a billion dollars using dots. (You’ll be scrolling for a little bit…)

Photo by Alexander Schimmeck on Unsplash

In June 2021, a bombshell report came out from ProPublica, detailing how the wealthiest Americans avoid paying taxes through legal means. The report calculates the actual tax rate for billionaires such as Warren Buffet, Mark Zuckerberg, and Jeff Bezos.

Everyone knows Jeff Bezos, founder of Amazon, is the wealthiest person in the world. At the time of this writing, on Forbes, he’s estimated to have a net worth of $177 billion.

But what does that amount of money and wealth evenlook like? Can you really visualize how much $177 billion is exactly? Can you imagine or conceptualize it?

What about 1 billion dollars, for that matter? Can anyone truly comprehend or visualize what a billion dollars looks like?

In your mind, you know that’s a lot of money. Obscene.

The outrageously huge number gets thrown around frequently enough in daily news and conversations that people probably don’t appreciate the enormity of its gigantic nature.

In this amusing Buzzfeed article posted last year, memes and factoids from Twitter were used to illustrate how vast the difference between millions and billions is. The subheadline mindbogglingly stated that “if you made $7,000 an hour every day since the birth of Jesus Christ, you’d have made less money than Jeff Bezos.”

Yeah. If your jaw dropped from shock after reading that sentence, it’s safe to assume that you didn’t realize how big a billion is. Most people can’t. I couldn’t. I still can’t.

To many, millionaires and billionaires are grouped as one cohort of wealthy people. But the fact is that billionaires are eons ahead of millionaires when it comes to wealth. Billionaires belong to a totally different group of people, separate from millionaires.

Billionaires have so much individual wealth that the question of whether or not billionaires should even exist in the world has gained traction in the past few years.

During the 2020 US presidential Democratic election primaries, the New York Times asked every major Democratic candidate the question about abolishing billionaires. The answers varied between candidates.

Some people believe there shouldn’t be billionaires, while there is still so much poverty and inequality in the world. Others believe that billionaires have a right to wealth in a free market system that rewards them with success thanks to their hard work, innovation, empire-building, etc.

I won’t address either point of the debate, but I will focus on providing information to help quantify what a billion truly means.

First, here are a few facts that might help illustrate how big a billion is:

A billion seconds is 31.69 years. Let’s think about that. In fact, it’s 11,574 days.

If you wanted to save money to become a billionaire and you saved $100 a day, you would become a billionaire after 27,397.26 years.

One billion years ago, there were no plants and animals. The earth's landmasses formed one huge supercontinent called Rodinia. There was so much oxygen in the air that if humans lived back then, they wouldn’t be able to survive for more than a few seconds.

Humans are visual creatures, and for us to truly understand the scale of things, sometimes it is helpful to use illustrations to grasp the concept of scale.

So, let’s illustrate what a billion dollars looks like.

Visualizing One Billion Dollars

Before we illustrate a billion dollars in this article, let’s establish a baseline.

According to the 2020 Planning & Progress Study, the average American has an average of $65,900 in personal savings. According to the US Census Bureau, the median household income in the United States in 2019 was $68,703.

To many people, that may sound like a lot of money. So how does all of this stack against a billion dollars?

Visualizing A Billion Dollars. Using Dots.

In this exercise, for the sake of simplicity, let’s round up the average middle-class American income and savings from $60,000 to $100,000.

Second, let’s assume one dot equals $100,000. So to accurately visualize 1 billion dollars, we would need 10,000 dots.

$100,000 x 10,000 = $1,000,000,000 or one billion dollars.

What does 10,000 “dots” look like?

Here we go!

………(millionaire status here)………………………………………………………………………………

………………………………………………………………………………………

(not there yet)………………………………………………………………………………………

………………………………………………………………………………………

(almost there)………………………………………………………………………………………

………………………………………………………………………………………

(I lied — now you’re almost there)………………………………………………………………………………………

………………………………………………………………………………………

. ←There’s the last dot.

Trillion?

Crazy, right? That’s what one billion dollars would look like IF each dot were $10,000.

Remember how I said Jeff Bezos has an estimated net worth of 177 billion dollars? We would have to replicate the number of dots on this screen 177x times over to visualize Jeff Bezos’s net worth.

177x TIMES. Who has time to scroll through that many dots? To no surprise, the number one trillion has also started to spring up more in the news.

For example, Apple recently became the first company valued at $2 trillion after hitting $1 trillion in valuation only two years prior. President Joe Biden passed the COVID-19 stimulus relief package, the American Rescue Plan, which cost $1.9 trillion, while a bipartisan group of US senators is proposing a $1.2 trillion infrastructure plan.

If this article was about visualizing what one trillion dollars looked like, instead of one billion, you would have had to scroll down ten million dots! Y’all, we only just looked at 10,000 dots!

You would have had to scroll down a similar length of dots one thousand times over to see what one trillion looked like.

The next time you see the number, billion, you’ll probably have greater respect and appreciation (or disgust) for the massive scale of the number and its impact on the world around us.

Quy is a retail & digital commerce expert. Subscribe to his free newsletter here for his latest insights.