$14.86 or the Math of Repentance
Rodgers, Amazon, Musk, and our inability to count to a trillion
There was a time — let’s say, last millennium — when the difference between the rich and the poor was not so wildly pronounced in the US. Most people made well under $100,000 per year, and their bosses maybe made double. Even in the years when Wall Street trumpeted that “greed is good,” the financial fantasy of the American Everyman was to be a millionaire. Yes, we had a gilded class, but they were primarily quiet about it. John D. Rockefeller was already a billionaire by 1916 thanks to Standard Oil, but he certainly wasn’t on Instagram showing off his crib. (Do we still say “crib”? I’m 43. I don’t know.)
In those years, if someone asked you to buy something uber expensive for them, you would jokingly reply, “Who am I, Rockefeller?” The idea of having as much money as the Rockefellers was comical. It was a joke — and could only be a joke — because there were only a small handful of people in the country who were that wealthy. And, it would be my guess, if you asked the average American to describe the Rockefellers, they would call them “millionaires.” We understood that a billion was technically a number, but that large a number of dollars was unfathomable to most of us. Even now — fun fact! — it would take you at least 31 years to even count to a billion.
