Thread by @meganromer

2 French billionaires snapped their fingers and raised $300,000,000 for the rebuilding of Notre Dame.

38,000 of us pledged what we could, ranging from $1 to $50,000, in order to raise $2,000,000 to rebuild a few black churches.

That’s what wealth inequality looks like.

I am not ungrateful for those rebuilding Notre Dame. I think it’s a priceless piece of architecture. But if it takes 38,000 people to raise 1% of what a couple of billionaires can scrape out of the couch cushions, we’ve got a bigger problem.

I think a lot of us down here in the hundredaire class are unable to even grasp what being a billionaire means, but I think at some point, we need to stop abstracting it, work out the math, and realize that all billionaires are policy failures, full stop.

#taxestaxestaxes

Wait, let’s just do this experiment because it’s fun and good. Think about how far a leap it is to go from $1 to $1,000. It takes some time, right? If you’re trying to put it aside from your paycheck, depending on what you do or what you owe, it might take weeks/months/a year.

Most of us with regular jobs could get there, though, and even do occasionally, saving for a vacation or a piece of furniture. But now let’s make the same proportional leap - $1,000 to 1,000,000 (a million). How long would it take you to scrounge up $1,000,000?

I likely won’t be able to do it in my lifetime. Most of us won’t. I might make that amount of money total over my life, but just having it set aside so I can spend it? Lol, nah. But think for a second about how far a leap it is from $1 to $1,000 to $1,000,000.

Feel how the chasm grows? Okay, now do $1,000,000,000 (one billion). If $1,000 feels like that much more than $1, and $1,000,000 feels like that much more than $1,000, just try to imagine how impossible a billion really is. No one needs it.