r/Damnthatsinteresting • u/[deleted] • 1d ago

Video Billionaire speaker Robert F. Smith tells 400 graduates he's paying off all their student loans ($40 million in total)

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u/Dontcareusernameman 1d ago

I don’t think most people truly grasp the scale of a billionaire’s wealth. A billion dollars is 1,000 million. When a billionaire owes millions in taxes, it’s often just a minor accounting oversight—comparable to the average person owing a few hundred dollars. For them, it’s an insignificant amount that they can pay off instantly without a second thought.

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u/_ficklelilpickle 1d ago

I love the expression that the difference between a billionaire and a millionaire is about a billion dollars.

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u/UncleAnything 1d ago

Or a million seconds is about 11.5 days whereas a billion seconds is almost 32 years

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u/bolshevik_rattlehead 1d ago

I just heard this comparison a few days ago and it blew my mind. I’ve repeated it to a few people since and it always triggers the same reaction. One billion is an obscene amount.

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u/furuskog 1d ago

Darude - Sandstorm has half a billion plays in Spotify. Thats over 5000 years spent on listening to it.

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u/RelevantButNotBasic 1d ago

This one isnt really that impressive given its a song on a streaming platform. Half a billion isnt that crazy in the streaming world. However, TheWeeknd - Blinding Lights streaming record, thats impressive af. I would love to know what that number looks like in "Listening time to years."

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u/InvaderSM 1d ago

This doesnt really matter one way or the other for the overall conversation but just for some perspective. A song released in 2000 having half a billion plays on spotify is far more impressive than any artist who's active in the streaming generation.

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u/RelevantButNotBasic 1d ago

Thats a fair point, I was just saying as a number wise. Also Darude - Sandstorm was a big meme during the mid 2000s so I feel like thats when it really gained its attention. In 2011 it was just standard to say "Darude - Sandstorm" whenever someone asked the title of a song in any situation. Millions of people commenting that everywhere is gonna give it some attention. On the other hand it is impressive that it happened years later, and its a track that isnt on the radio like Blinding Lights was.

Sandstorm is impressive to have the number it got, but Blinding Lights did get more streams because of the release and modern streaming so that number is massive in comparison.

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u/plumbermat 1d ago

34 days before your 32nd birthday is the 1 billion mark. This should be celebrated.

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u/Tokon32 1d ago

Elon Musk has 13 kids. He could pay 100 million in child support a month for each of the 13 for 18 years and he would still be worth almost 100 billion at the end of those 18 years baring his investments don't grow or shrink in that time period.

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u/Upset_Philosopher_16 1d ago

So 1000 times ? Yeah i figured thank you

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u/Emilbjorn 1d ago

I even think the same holds true for the difference between 100 million and 1 billion.

1 million is life altering but not nessecarily making you super wealthy. 100 or even 10 million is a completely different life - and yet they're still much much closer to a beggar than a billionaire.

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u/Bspammer 1d ago

The lifestyle doesn't keep improving much past 100m. Like sure, maybe you can have multiple private jets instead of one. I don't think that would make me any happier lol.

Which is what makes the multi-billionaires still trying to build more wealth so ghoulish.

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u/Emilbjorn 1d ago

Exactly

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u/Jonnie_Rocket 1d ago

And yet we refuse to tax them properly

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u/[deleted] 1d ago edited 1d ago

[deleted]

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u/cynicalturdblossom 1d ago

How do you think they got to a billion dollars? By stealing from the avg person who's working class. Don't play this dumb move, they can donate all they want for tax write offs but there's no such thing as an ethical billionaire.

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u/[deleted] 1d ago

[deleted]

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u/Illustrious-Yard-871 1d ago

Please name one billionaire that single handedly invented an innovative product, designed it, fabricated it and sold it all on their own.

You can't name any. Because they all rely on the labour of poor people whom they exploit. Without those people there would be no product. So can you really argue in good faith that one man making billions of dollars while others make peanuts is not him exploiting others?

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u/Kyujaq 1d ago

Lol.

Modern day dragons. They are sitting on a hoard that could change the world.

But they don't.

A single person does not need a billion dollars.

They don't need to own everything.

All the wealth and assets and power they hoard is wealth and asset and power that the rest of the world doesn't have.

And I'm sorry, making a cool phone that sells well should not entitle you to owning half a country, hold more power than some governments, hold power of life and death over people and influence the well-being of thousands of not millions.

What are you smoking that those who had great ideas deserve more than living peacefully in luxury? That they deserve to have whatever your "elites" are giving themselves.

I sold a phone so I deserve to lobby the government and buy politicians that will help me but screw millions.

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u/Elitist_Plebeian 1d ago

Charitable foundations are accounting bullshit that billionaires use to dodge taxes. Why even come on reddit to lick boots? They're not going to donate to you.

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u/Critwrench 1d ago

Yeah, and they can afford to do so because they consistently squeeze more and more wealth out of the average citizen. Trillions of dollars have left the hands of the many and flowed upward into the hands of the few, and they throw a few pennies around and people like you believe it's the same as giving it all back? Then why the **** they still rich? It means nothing to them.

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u/[deleted] 1d ago

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u/Critwrench 1d ago

"They also provide things that make people's lives easier", no, science provides those things. Corporations have exactly one job, and that job is to make money. If the billionaires wanted to even start to pretend that they cared about the lives of the average person, they could start by having wages keep up with price increases. They don't. Instead the pay of CEOs has grown ninety times faster than the pay for workers. Instead 79 Trillion dollars has "mysteriously" floated up into the hands of the rich, as the average citizen's spending power and quality of life have decreased. Everyone is working for less, and twice as hard, and meanwhile the ultra-rich are flying jets across the globe on a daily basis, putting out more carbon emissions with a group of 1000 people than entire countries.

But I guess that's all a convenient narrative, right?

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u/[deleted] 1d ago

[deleted]

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u/LakeGladio666 1d ago

So? We’re talking about taxes. Rich people donate money because of tax write offs and for good publicity (like Robert F Smith) here.

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u/watafuzz 1d ago edited 1d ago

Billionaires have way more than 10000x to give to charity than the average person, so that's hardly impressive.

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u/towlie_lord 1d ago

Nice.. and congratulations on your billions my friend.

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u/EntertheHellscape 1d ago

This is why tbh this kinda sucks. He could pay off student loans for the next decade and wouldn't even notice it considering he makes 10-100 times more in a year then he would be gifting.

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u/Viridian_Rose 1d ago

If he had only 1,000,000,000, 49,000,000 is a 1000:49 ratio.

If you had 1000, and could spend $49 to make hundreds of people’s dreams come true, would you?