A recent conversation reminded me of an illustration I used at a client site a few years ago...
The Forbes 400 list had come out, and at the time, Bill Gates was the richest man in the world, with an estimated net worth of $80 Billion.
We quickly came to the conclusion that this was an unimaginable amount, so I thought, "Why not relate it to something we all know?"
The average American family earns in the neighborhood of $50,000/year. If you're doing well, that figure could climb to $75,000/year or even the magical $100,000/year. We all agreed that at $150,000/year, you were doing very well indeed.
Over a 40-year working life, this gives us a range between $2,000,000 at the $50K level and $6,000,000 at the $150K level. At the "mid-range"$100K level, this gives us $4,000,000... this is probably not out of the question for a 2-earner family.
To make the numbers more manageable, I cut the 6 zeros off the end... so $2,000,000 becomes $2, $4,000,000 becomes $4, etc. Stay with me, this will make sense in a minute.
On their $2 to $4, the average American family buys houses, cars, goes on vacations, sends their kids to college, donates to charity, etc... that is, they have a nice life.
Back to Mr. Gates' $80 Billion, which is written thus: $80,000,000,000. Applying the treatment of removing 6 zeros from the end of this results in $80,000.
Meaning: Bill Gates has $80,000 in his pocket right now compared to the average family's $2-$4 lifetime earnings. Put another way, Mr. Gates has 20,000-40,000 times more money in his pocket in this instant than the average American family will earn in their entire working lives.
In a society where money means power, this is a stunning concentration of power. I certainly don't have anything against Mr. Gates; I in many ways admire him and just happened to pick him because he was at the top of the list. But it doesn't stand to reason that a representative democracy can survive under such pressures.
