Just the Facts
Billionaires: What A Concept?
It is hard to conceptualize just how much one billion dollars is.
Most of us can at least get our heads wrapped around one million dollars. The median American household, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, earns $83,730 annually. For such a household it takes twelve years to amass $1 million in total earnings. Most people can understand the size of $1 million and can relate to the amount of time it takes to earn that amount. These figures are accessible to us and make sense in the context of the lives we lead.
One billion is a different kettle of fish.
A median American household would need to toil for almost 12,000 years to accumulate $1 billion in total earnings, in constant dollars.
Twelve thousand years ago human beings still hadn’t figured out farming. The ice age was just coming to a close, written language and civilization were still thousands of years off and Jesus Christ and his Roman antagonists were 10,000 years in the future. The pyramids would take 7,000 more years before beginning construction.
The thought of working for 12,000 years is mind boggling. To get your head wrapped around the idea that a modern American household could go to work every day, back to the time ground was broken on the first Egyptian pyramid, and still not be halfway to earning one billion dollars gives context to just how much one billion is to a typical person and family.
Sergey Brin, one of the founders of Google, is worth about $250 billion. To earn that much money today’s typical American household would need to work about three million years. Homo Sapiens - us - didn’t show up until about 200,000 years ago, which means that the first human being - and her household - would still be less than 10% of the way to hitting the $1 trillion threshold which Elon Musk, reportedly, just crossed.
The fact that we are now talking about the first trillionaire means that income and wealth inequality is at a point that we don’t even have proper analogies.
Simply put, it is perverse and obscene that individuals now commonly accumulate so much money that typical Americans would have to work for a period of time that predates the beginning of crop cultivation, in the case of billionaires, or greatly exceeds the entire history of humanity itself in the case of Elon Musk.
Yet, here we are.
This is why thousands of healthcare workers in California, who are members of SEIU-UHW, collected over 1.5 million signatures this past spring in order to qualify the first-ever tax on the growing number of billionaires who have made their gargantuan fortunes in our state. SEIU-UHW members, including nurses, lab techs, medical assistants, radiology staff, EVS professionals, know that if we fail to pass a first of its kind, one-time tax on billionaires our healthcare system, already stretched to the limit, will suffer a catastrophe.
On November 3, Proposition 40 provides the opportunity to vote on whether or not the billionaires pay a modest, one time tax so that 3.5 million Californians don’t lose health insurance as a part of a larger, implosion of our healthcare system including the closure of community clinics, hospitals and emergency rooms. Beyond millions losing coverage, hospital and community clinic closures will accelerate, over 100,000 caregivers will be laid off, consumers will pay more in premiums, deductibles and co-pays and, quite literally, thousands of Californians will needlessly lose their lives, in the next few years, because they were unable to get the care they need at prices they could afford. All so that President Trump and Congress could finance yet another round of tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans.
I am struggling to understand why the billionaires find this controversial as opposed to a practical, common-sense solution to a huge imminent problem.
In fact, once Prop 40 passes in November, the median American household would still need to work 2.85 million years to earn the $237.5 billion that Sergey Brin has left over after paying the billionaire tax.
Again, the first human appeared in East Africa about 200,000 years ago.
If it is now not considered “fair” that one individual is able to hold an amount of money that is equivalent to what a typical household would earn, if it kept every penny of its pay, back to a point in time 2.65 million years before the first human being appeared on planet Earth, so that we prevent a collapse in our healthcare system, then we at SEIU-UHW give up.
Sergey Brin is not a “victim”. Elon Musk is not a “victim”. Billionaires and trillionaires are not “victims”.
How much is enough?
And: way more than is enough ought to be enough.
Taxing billionaires to preserve our healthcare system and coverage is common sense. Californians need affordable coverage, open and functioning healthcare facilities and a network of support and coverage that does not knowingly allow hard working people to lose their lives unnecessarily. And, for what it’s worth, the billionaires will still have plenty for another super yacht.
On November 3, vote yes on Prop 40.
If we could figure out farming, we can surely figure this one out.
Well said
. For example, when Jeff bezos became a billionaire in 1997 Amazon had 600 employees. Today it has over 1.5 million employees. Do you think if Bernie Sanders had confiscated Bezos wealth in 1997 he would have devised a government program to create 1.499 million jobs?"