7.5 B peeps and so little time

7 500 000 000 people on Earth.

Assuming 10 seconds each to shake hands and exchange identities and greetings and that they are all lined up as at the end of a sporting event coming to you, that’s 75 billion seconds!

or 1 250 000 000 minutes if you prefer; or 20 833 333.333 hours if you’d rather; or 868055.55556 days; or 2 376.67 and bits years if it so strikes your fancy.

I’m a good guy on average and would really like to meet everyone but 23 centuries and a fourth is a bit of a stretch if you ask me.

Isn’t it incredible how big numbers quickly get out of hand ( shakes in this precise case )?

We all have grown accustomed to big numbers such as 7 billion human beings but rarely consider them for what they are. We take incredible figures at face value so to speak.

1 and 1/4 billion minutes … nearly 21 million hours and almost 9 hundred thousand days?

As a racoon scampers across the clearing ( my throat ), let’s find another example.

Your chances at winning the lottery are not good, not good at all. about the same as the average jackpot actually one in 15 million for 15 million bucks, 1 in 30M for thirty M$ and the big US lottery gives hundreds of millions regularly at a chance rate of 1 in 175 million.

Let us then say you won a single lonely million, secondary draw or some such. If you were to spend a thousand bucks a day, that million would be gone in a thousand days, not even three years. But a billion, which is our initial number as in 7.5 B peeps on Earth would let you spend a thousand bucks a day for a thousand times longer or nearly 3 THOUSAND years!
Had you won the lottery when Christ was born, you’d still have 737.9 years left at that rate of spending. ( For those who did not follow, spending 1 000 $ or Euros a day means 365 000$ a year of net revenue, or after income tax! ) Do you understand why Warren Buffet and a few other billionaires are actually asking to pay more taxes? They know very well that they are not going to spend their whole fortune themselves even while extra-generous! Bill Gates already “restructured” his fortune/holdings at least twice. It means more or less that at some point, being nominatively linked a.k.a. owning that much money hinders making more. And it certainly does not stop Bill and his wife Melinda to accomplish great things through foundations to cure Africa of Aids, better the American school system by supporting its most innovative and efficient teachers and funding small projects that you, I or anyone can ask them  money for. As for themselves, they can live on their usual lifestyle from the scrapings of their fortune, literally.

How you ask? Well, not only do these people know about money which is how they got so rich in the first place but they also understand that money can regenerate itself if one is careful so that those scrapings can easily provide income. Let us revert to our lottery example to explain that one. You just won 12.5 million Euros ( a hundredth of those shaking minutes up there 😎 )!!! You can spend 1K per day for 34+ years or … you can make it make money.

10 million in account A if placed, invested by a professional can bring 10% of its value yearly! If the professional is good, 10% net and adjusted for inflation or a million!
1 million in account B placed the same way gives one hundred thousand clear the first year. While true that this is only a fourth of our figure to generate a thousand spent bucks a day income,do not forget A- that it still comes up to 250 dollars per day, B- what the last three words in that sentence were and C- that we are not finished on those 12.5 M bills won with that ticket as there is still :
1.5 million to establish yourself. about enough to acquire two properties and plane tickets to join them and visit the family. Alternatively, enough to start a small business and become your own boss?

So C has just been settled and since you can live for 500 a day, snif or get credit on most important stuff and that my estimates are far from wild, conservative even, so is B! Because it so happens that by the end of that year, the million generated by account A having been dropped in account B, thus doubled and the clear amount in turn at the end of the second year will be doubled or around 200 000 $.
Everyone got that? Good! Now, easily, in four years, a third more time than the 1K/day the 1M jackpot in time, you have it up to par while the million is wholly spent and if we compare to our new basis of 12.5 million won, the norm of spending is after only four years ( with a 1.5 M headstart 😀 ) attained and the difference is that we already now that in this version … it will continue pretty much forever bar market hiccups and ends of the World.

Yes, of course, some greedy gnomes have spotted the upgrade. If you can live on the 1.5 million for say ? five Years? Magic happens! 10M acc. A gets its revenue reinvested in growth. So does acc. B!
So that at the end of Year 1= 10 +1 becomes 11 and 1.1 / Y2 : 12.1 & 1.21 / Y3 : 13.31 & 1.331 / Y4 : 14.63 and 1.463 and Y5 : 16.94 & 1.694 millions respectively.
The revenue itself out of account B is not great, a misely 170 thousand $ for the year but suppose that you then grabbed the half million and tried for two more years? At the end of those, your main account has passed the 20 million mark. It generates 2 million a year. you could take the extra million at the end of the next year and live on it or leave it and have the thing grow or set it to account C so that this new account now generates a 100K a year also and then try to leave account B alone from now on etc etc etc. The next year, account A will again generate an additional million and change. And ( keep the change to live on ) it only goes on like that.  30 million in account A before the end of year 11. Three years later 40 Million! It’s not that simple but almost!

Let us now replace those 12.5 millions with billions instead. Spending nearly a million per day would still leave you with 40 Billion bucks after 15 years or so. That is what billionaires achieve! Bigger numbers, same process, bigger results! You do understand that they can give away most of their fortunes and still retain the ability to produce immense heaps of money.

Why all of this about millions of Euros or dollars won at the lottery and billions of people and centuries of handshaking?

Because this year, the US budget will run to 2 902 billion, nearly 3 trillion $ ! At the same time, spending will reach 3 803 billion and so the deficit 901 billion. Almost a trillion dollars.
A trillion dollars equals of course a thousand billions? If you had won the lottery as ventured above and managed to fix that revenue at about 1 000 bucks per day and allowed it ALL to go towards reimbursing your debt of 901 billion, it would take 2 and a half million years to pay it off!!!!! Well not quite, 2 466 871 years to be exact! 😎

Shoot! I’ll go with the handshaking then. Hello! please to meet you, I am Tay.

2013 USA budget info :
http://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/omb/budget/fy2013/assets/tables.pdf

http://www.whitehouse.gov/omb/overview