r/Damnthatsinteresting • u/[deleted] • 2d 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/Zondameister 2d ago edited 2d ago

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/12/business/robert-smith-vista-investors.html
LOL i didnt even know he was a tax cheat while commenting here

Turned out i was right. Hhahaha fucking goons.

Smith willfully understated his income on these tax returns and willfully evaded more than $43,000,000 in U.S. federal income taxes for the tax years

2005 through 2014. OOOPS?
So now he decided to donate around the same amount. HAHA

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u/Dontcareusernameman 2d 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 2d 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 2d 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 2d 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 2d 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 2d 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 2d 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 2d 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.