ctenidae
Active member
Things you can buy with $1,000,000,000,000
• Perspective – $1 trillion is a lot of money. First up, we’d need to get one of those cool machines that counts/sorts hundred dollar bills into packets of $10k. Although one trillion = 100MM $10k packets. So we’d better get about 1000 of those machines. Assuming they can count/package a $10k bundle in 30 seconds, it would only take 34 days to package the money. But where do we put it? Assume that each bundle is 1” tall. Stacked on top of each other, that would be 1,578 miles of $10k packets. Repeat..this is a lot of money!
• Golf with Tiger Woods – Pay $2B for Augusta National Golf Course, home of the The Masters. Pay Tiger Woods $50MM to be on call for 10 rounds of golf with you and your buddies. Pay Phil Mickelson $5MM for the same deal and tip him $1MM if he’ll carry Tiger’s bag. Assume he does this twice (might be conservative..Phil likes his blackjack). You’ve spent $2.057B and have $997.94B remaining.
• Transportation – You’ll need a way to get to Augusta. Buy 10 G5’s, fully crewed and a swanky hangar (lets round up to $500MM). Just so you don’t risk running out, buy 5 million gallons of jet fuel (at $5/gal). To make sure your friends can get there..purchase Continental Airlines at a 25% takeout premium to yesterday’s close…that’s another $25B. Leaves you $972.7B to spend.
• Up for a bridge game? Take ~10% of your money and buy Warren Buffet and Bill Gates outright (assuming they’re worth about $75B after the current market correction and you’ll have to pay a 30% takeout premium to get them). Pay them $1B each to wear funny hats and perform with American Idol’s William Hung on a 1 hour TV special…add $5B to buy the TV station. Total cost $104.5B..leaving you $868.2B
• Make the world a better place – Give 100 of the world’s best run humanitarian organizations $1B each. Spend $100MM with some smart consulting firm developing a rigorous system to track performance/impact. Explain system to recipients..and then tell them that the 10 most effective will get another $10B each in aid the following year. Next 10 get $5B each. Next 30 get $1B. Bottom 50 get nothing more. Spend $100MM more to make sure nobody bribes the auditors. This costs $280.2B and leaves us with $588B..more than half of our original trillion.
• Education – There are 2.7MM teachers in the US teaching elementary and middle school. Average salary = $46.8k/year. Fire them all. Raise average salary by 50% and hold open interviews to re-fill the positions. Spend $1BB doing rigorous testing/interviewing of all applicants. Rehire those that make the cut; augment with those that are attracted by better pay. Create $100BB bonus pool – invest in Tbills at 4% generating $4BB /year to be allocated to best 10% of teachers. $15k annual bonus opportunity. Costs $164B leaving us $424B. (And yes, we know the high school teachers would want a slice of the action).
• Houses..lots of them. Take $1BB and buy 10 $20MM houses (whatever is left over pays for the staff, taxes, upkeep, etc). If you didn’t own a home in Houston, TX, you’d be crazy! Still $423B left.
• Buy some Google stock – Any product that is free to users and can help you find out cool stuff (like how many teachers there are in the US or a Milli Vanilli video) has to be going higher. Purchasing 10% is only $11.4B, leaving us $412.6B.
• Blowout in Vegas – Have best party ever imagined…rent out Bellagio’s 3993 rooms (at $250/night) and give every one of your 10,000 guests a yellow $5k chip to gamble with…for a week. Hire all of People Magazine’s 100 Sexiest People Alive to mingle with crowd. Pay them each $20,000/day. Assume catering bill is $500/person/day and bar bill is $1000/person/day. Transportation already paid for (remember you own the G5’s and all of CAL). Pretty awesome week for only $0.48B..you’ve got $412.1B still in your pocket.
• Perspective – $1 trillion is a lot of money. First up, we’d need to get one of those cool machines that counts/sorts hundred dollar bills into packets of $10k. Although one trillion = 100MM $10k packets. So we’d better get about 1000 of those machines. Assuming they can count/package a $10k bundle in 30 seconds, it would only take 34 days to package the money. But where do we put it? Assume that each bundle is 1” tall. Stacked on top of each other, that would be 1,578 miles of $10k packets. Repeat..this is a lot of money!
• Golf with Tiger Woods – Pay $2B for Augusta National Golf Course, home of the The Masters. Pay Tiger Woods $50MM to be on call for 10 rounds of golf with you and your buddies. Pay Phil Mickelson $5MM for the same deal and tip him $1MM if he’ll carry Tiger’s bag. Assume he does this twice (might be conservative..Phil likes his blackjack). You’ve spent $2.057B and have $997.94B remaining.
• Transportation – You’ll need a way to get to Augusta. Buy 10 G5’s, fully crewed and a swanky hangar (lets round up to $500MM). Just so you don’t risk running out, buy 5 million gallons of jet fuel (at $5/gal). To make sure your friends can get there..purchase Continental Airlines at a 25% takeout premium to yesterday’s close…that’s another $25B. Leaves you $972.7B to spend.
• Up for a bridge game? Take ~10% of your money and buy Warren Buffet and Bill Gates outright (assuming they’re worth about $75B after the current market correction and you’ll have to pay a 30% takeout premium to get them). Pay them $1B each to wear funny hats and perform with American Idol’s William Hung on a 1 hour TV special…add $5B to buy the TV station. Total cost $104.5B..leaving you $868.2B
• Make the world a better place – Give 100 of the world’s best run humanitarian organizations $1B each. Spend $100MM with some smart consulting firm developing a rigorous system to track performance/impact. Explain system to recipients..and then tell them that the 10 most effective will get another $10B each in aid the following year. Next 10 get $5B each. Next 30 get $1B. Bottom 50 get nothing more. Spend $100MM more to make sure nobody bribes the auditors. This costs $280.2B and leaves us with $588B..more than half of our original trillion.
• Education – There are 2.7MM teachers in the US teaching elementary and middle school. Average salary = $46.8k/year. Fire them all. Raise average salary by 50% and hold open interviews to re-fill the positions. Spend $1BB doing rigorous testing/interviewing of all applicants. Rehire those that make the cut; augment with those that are attracted by better pay. Create $100BB bonus pool – invest in Tbills at 4% generating $4BB /year to be allocated to best 10% of teachers. $15k annual bonus opportunity. Costs $164B leaving us $424B. (And yes, we know the high school teachers would want a slice of the action).
• Houses..lots of them. Take $1BB and buy 10 $20MM houses (whatever is left over pays for the staff, taxes, upkeep, etc). If you didn’t own a home in Houston, TX, you’d be crazy! Still $423B left.
• Buy some Google stock – Any product that is free to users and can help you find out cool stuff (like how many teachers there are in the US or a Milli Vanilli video) has to be going higher. Purchasing 10% is only $11.4B, leaving us $412.6B.
• Blowout in Vegas – Have best party ever imagined…rent out Bellagio’s 3993 rooms (at $250/night) and give every one of your 10,000 guests a yellow $5k chip to gamble with…for a week. Hire all of People Magazine’s 100 Sexiest People Alive to mingle with crowd. Pay them each $20,000/day. Assume catering bill is $500/person/day and bar bill is $1000/person/day. Transportation already paid for (remember you own the G5’s and all of CAL). Pretty awesome week for only $0.48B..you’ve got $412.1B still in your pocket.
