Most people can basically grasp what a million dollars looks like, in consumer goods. If you live in an expensive city, you have a good idea of what you'd buy with, say, $50 million. But unless you yourself are ultrawealthy, you have no emotional grasp of what $1 billion means.
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For readers: this is why I often give you some stupid number for context on government figures, like "It's enough to buy a brand-new Ferrari for every member of the Harvard graduating class". It's easier for most people to understand Ferraris than intuit $$$ past 7 figures.
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(Not you, dear reader, of course. But other readers). Anyway, we like to think we're far beyond the cultures that have number systems like "1,2,3,many"--but not so much farther as we think. Which is how mistakes like this get made.
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The inability to grasp large numbers is also, as
@charlescwcooke pointed out, how so many Sanders/Warren supporters believed that we could fund a welfare state that consumes 60-70% of GDP almost exclusively by taxing the top 1%, who collect <20% of national income.Show this thread
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Billion dollar heist would have to be in a post-inflationary science fiction setting
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For cybercrime, seems possible; instead they piddle in the millions.
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If normal people understood how rich rich people actually are, the guillotines would be out already.
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Excellent observation - people's eyes gloss over above a certain level where you just can't grasp the size of the numbers involved
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