Let’s stretch the metaphor to encompass numbers closer to home, shall we?
If you’re making $15/hour, that’s a bit over $31,000/year (lower-middle class for a single person, despite the fact that it’s not really enough to live on by yourself). That works out to about 8.5 hours. Most of us would feel like we were doing pretty damn well if we hit $100,000 (which is an upper-class income for a single person, but just barely). That’s just a little more than 1 day (~27 hours).
So for perspective, if your annual salary is converted to seconds, then the lower/middle class dividing line is at ~1/3 of a day, and the middle/upper class dividing line is at ~1 day. Anything over 1 day is a pretty comfortable lifestyle.
Now look at that tweet up there again. 1 billion seconds is 31.5 years.
Net worth for the richest people is constantly in flux because it depends on the value of their investments, which is constantly changing, but they’re all over 100 billion. That’s 315 years. If you go back that far, the U.S. hasn’t even declared independence yet.
And yet 1 day is a pretty decent living and 1 month would generally be considered “rich”.
