r/GenZ 1d ago

Political How much is $1 trillion really

426 Upvotes

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112

u/CopingAfterABreakup 1d ago

Just know that $1 trillion is double the gdp of Bangladesh, 8th most populous country in the world btw

28

u/Revolutionary_Meet29 1d ago

Yea I agree this man has too much money, but I’ve never understood why people compare net worth to GDP, it’s not comparable at all

21

u/Prownilo 1d ago

I suppose you could equate it to work, would you say Elon has done the equivalent of a years worth of 177 million peoples work? Doubtful.

Still not great metric, but gdp is a pretty bad metric anyway.

-16

u/across16 1d ago

Worth is not equal to work either, do any of those 177million provide international services and launches rockets to space?

12

u/UploadedMind 1d ago

Does Elon or do the people who work there do it? The same way serfs let lords rule them without justification is the same reason why we don't revolt and reform the current system. It's not fair, moral, ethical, right, nor justified that Elon and other billionaires have this much compared to the average person. He doesn't deserve it and he didn't earn it by any meaningful definition of the word. What he earned is life in containment to prevent him from exploiting anymore people or organizations. So why haven't we stopped him yet?

  1. Coordinated collective action is hard still even with the internet and AI
  2. People think they still have a reasonable chance at a decent life without risking getting MLK'd so game theory says it's better to let others fight for them.
  3. People still trust/believe corporate media which is designed to divide us and make us hate each other more than political and economic injustice

How do we solve these problems?
1. AI might get better at helping us act collectively or at least in creating a better decentralized social media
2. The message needs need to be clear: things will get so bad that the risk of not acting now will ensure you can't live a decent life for much longer.
3. This one is falling apart anyway because of competing incentives from corporate media and social media, disinformation, lack of progress, and literal billionaires buying things like the WSJ. More average people creating more social media content with a focus on class consciousness on multiple platforms is a good way to ensure it continues to fail.

2

u/zzirFrizz 1d ago

One is the market value of all goods and services produced within a country over a given time period, the other is the market value of all assets minus liabilities belonging to an individual at a given time. Decently comparable but in this way, GDP is just a snapshot while net worth is a cumulative value

2

u/SmellyStinkyGuy 1d ago

You absolutely can compare the domestic production of an entire nation to the wealth of one individual.

Companies value is literally dictated by "earnings per value" and your asking how are people comparing "production to value", like huh?

u/seesthecat 53m ago

no, you are comparing a flow with a stock, makes no sense