I was doing some math in my head. I’ve been thinking about housing prices and wanted to assess the rough value of my city neighborhood block.
Assuming the average value of a house in my neighborhood is a flat $500k, that means 2 houses = $1M.
Counting the houses on my street I estimated there are about 20 houses per-block, which means 1 block = 20 houses = $10M.
Continuing to scale that up by factors of 10, we get:
10 blocks = 200 houses = $100M
and
100 blocks = 2000 houses = $1B
I opened up a map to visualize 100 blocks and it’s practically my entire city neighborhood. Billionaires shouldn’t exist.
My favourite way to describe this is “the difference between a million and a billion is about a billion.”
A million seconds is 11.5 days. A billion seconds is a little under 32 years.
This one is my favorite for really conveying the difference in scale.
I like to say “if a millionaire lost a million dollars, he would be broke. But if a billionaire lost a million dollars, he’d still pretty much a billionaire.”
Wait until you see blackrock’s real estate holdings.
That’s why I believe there should be a legal limit to how many houses one can own. Even if this could be easily bypassable by registering in the name of family members, it would hardly reach such proportions
Rather than a hard cap, I like the idea of property tax rates that go on an exponential curve depending on how many houses you have beyond the one you live in, which are used either to subsidize building more housing or somehow redistributed.
It’s easier to implement as a tax credit. You’re entitled to a 90% rebate on the property taxes for the home you live in, perhaps a 50% credit for a home you own that a family member lives in, and no rebate for additional properties.
One major benefit of this is as soon as a lender initiates foreclosure proceedings, the taxes owed on the property go through the fucking roof. They are motivated to work with you on the loan.
I just heard a nice comparision:
- 1 USD equals 1 second
- 1 Million USD is 12 days
- 1 Billion USD is 32 years
If a standard US citizen owns 500.000 in average - this is 6 days vs. Larry Page (120 B) with 3,840 years
Yes, big numbers are hard to conceptualise.
Philly houses are like $100K back in the early 2010s
taxes were around $2000 ish per year…
So we moved from NYC and used to be renters… but now we own the house… (well I don’t have a share, its technically my parents for the time being)
So you’d think: well great! no rent anymore! perfect? Right? RIGHT?
fast forward…
Kids were more racist in school and I got bullied a lot. (I’m ethnic Chinese)
😭
I hate Philly, I rather be in NYC. 🫠
So yes, home ownership and all… but at what cost?
Ghetto ass place :/
Caused me so much anxiety and self esteem issues and probably one of the major factors into my depression.
/endrant
Once you start trying to do anything that involves employing people (e.g. running a small business) you start realising how far a million goes. 5 software engineers in an office with equipment for a year? In a European country or USA/Canada, you’ll need the best part of a million. It’s not just salaries. There’s also employment taxes and other costs to consider.
A billion and it’s now more like 750 engineers for 15 years.
Just because you have $1M doesn’t mean you can afford to own two $500k houses. Maintenance, property taxes and insurance would probably be unaffordable.
You lease out one of them…
I mean you’ll get lynched by Lemmy for doing this, but that’s how you realistically gonna make money from it.
You assume they are paying outright and not financing it over a couple decades. They own a significant more doing it that way.
So a billion is more than a million. Huh
