How big is a billion?

According to the Australian Financial Review, as of January 2023, there are
45 Australian billionaires.
FORTY-FIVE people who have billions of $$$$!
The top three:

• Gina Rinehart – $34.02 billion (up from $31.06 billion).
• Andrew Forrest – $30.72 billion (up from $27.25 billion).
• Mike Cannon-Brookes – $27.83 billion (up from $20.18 billion)

 
Do ‘ordinary’ people, like you and me, understand the enormity of a BILLION?
Let’s think about it. Let’s pretend that you, or I, had a billion dollars.

If you had ONE billion dollars to spend in a year — just ONE billion — here’s some info:
A billion is classed as a thousand million. Historically, a billion used to be a MILLION X million, but times have changed and a million x million is now classed as a TRILLION. Phew! Imagine!

Now, getting back to your one billion . . .
One billion for a year would give you more than $83 MILLION per MONTH to spend.
As we all know, there are 365 days in a year. That means that, with your billion, you could spend $2,739,726 a day, before you had used up your billion dollars.
How would that be? You could spend well over TWO MILLION per day to get through your $ billion!
You could spend $114,155 every hour of each day (even when you sleep).
So, more than $114 thousand every hour means $ 1,902 dollars a minute.
Let that sink in – as Elon once said.
Or, if you prefer a weekly amount, there’s about $19,230,769 per week to get rid of.
$19 million a week sounds okay to me!

Now, we are talking about ONE BILLION dollars here. You can see that even if you tried, it would be difficult (ha!) to use up that amount in a year. Considering, of course that you (being a billionaire), would already own your own house and a car or two — maybe even a yacht as well.

Okay, so perhaps you had ten years to spend that billion . . .
That’s still a hundred million to spend every year.
Every day you would have only (only!) approx.$274,000 to spend.
Buy a new house every second day if you wished.
Here’s an idea: Why not help some homeless people?
(If you or I really had ‘our’ billion dollars, I hope that’s what we would do).
 
Yes, I know that these (40+) multi-billionaires do not have their billions of dollars stashed in cash in a tin under the bed. Much of their money is tied up in land, businesses, and such, BUT they do have access to this amount of money (eventually) at their disposal.
And, yes, I know that there is some charity work done every now and again (mostly by Mike Cannon-Brookes – thank you) but it is mostly ‘peanuts’.
A billion dollars is a HUGE amount.
Try to imagine (I certainly can’t) what over $30 billion would be like.
More to the point, imagine what one could DO with 30 BILLION DOLLARS!
 
What intrigues me is this: WHY don’t most billionaires give away stacks and stacks of money? They surely must see some great and obvious needs.
Is there a connection between being hugely wealthy and lacking in empathy and (dare I say?) COMPASSION?
Or are they too busy accumulating $$$$ to ever connect with ‘ordinary’ others in this world?

I don’t hate billionaires. I don’t even dislike them, nor am I envious of them (well, maybe a tiny bit).
But I wonder about their priorities.

​Winston Churchill said: “We make a living by what we get. We make a life by what we give”.
I do wonder if “our” billionaires realise how GOOD it makes you feel when you GIVE?