> To visualize $1.5 billion: if you cashed that check out in $100 bills and stacked them one on top of another, it would reach a five story building. For ordinary plebeians like us, at the average US salary of around $75K, you’d need to work 20,000 years to earn that.
A stack of bills is roughly 0.5 inches. Assuming a 12-ft joist-to-joist spacing, that's 12 feet per floor \times 12 inches per foot \times 2 stacks per inch = 288 stacks per floor = $2.88M per floor since a stack of 100s is $10k
So that would be a 1,000M / 2.88M ~ 347 story building.
Or is my unit conversion wildly off from dealing with sick kids over the holidays?
The average US salary isn't $75k btw. That figure is usually quoted from the reported median household income in 2022[1]. The median personal income, which is the figure that should* be quoted, was around $45k for 2024[2].
No, we don't need to visualize that.