My first observation of a billionaire happened over sixty years ago. I was a teenage student working 44 hours weekly as an evening and weekend taxi dispatcher. I earned $33 but took home less because of taxes. The cab stand was beside the Westview Wharf in Powell River. We paid close attention to the arrivals of vessels because those led to fares, usually for return trips to grocery and liquor stores.
In days of low fuel prices, luxurious private yachts regularly sailed the BC coast. None were more impressive than the 79-metre Danginn, a ship owned by Daniel K. Ludwig, one of the world’s first billionaires.
Following his death in 1992, the New York Times reported:
Mr. Ludwig went into shipping at the age of 19, using a borrowed $5,000. In 1968, when he was 71, Fortune magazine said he was one of eight Americans worth $500 million or more, and in 1976 the magazine said he and the insurance executive John D. MacArthur were the country’s only billionaires or near-billionaires.
Estimating personal wealth involves guesswork. Fortune magazine thought the richest man in 1976 was either MacArthur or Ludwig. Others believed it was Howard Hughes or J. Paul Getty. A few estimates put the wealth of Getty and Hughes as somewhere around $2 billion.
Two billion dollars in 1976 is equivalent to about $10 billion today. Forbes is now reporting that the richest of the billionaires working to dismantle every part of the American government that benefits individuals is worth US$391 billion, which is around $550 billion Canadian.
Perhaps we should admire the effectiveness of the super-rich. They’ve convinced at least half of us to regularly vote for politicians comfortable with vast accumulations of riches and determined not to impose wealth taxes.
For those of us struggling to pay the rent or the mortgage, it is hard to visualize just how large Elon Musk’s wealth is. Perhaps this helps.
If a Canadian were to put aside C$500 a week, it would take more than 38,331 years to accumulate a billion dollars, and more than 21 million years to accumulate the wealth held by the man who wants to be King of the Universe.
Categories: Inequality
in-sights.ca 
Great story Norm.
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Sadly, in last November’s debacle, there was no party intending to do anything about this travesty, or at least a party that had a reasonable chance of even exerting a bit of influence on the political apparatus built up over the decades. Equally sadly, we will likely be confronted with a similar non-choice when the Liberal leadership race is done and the motion of non-confidence passes and the writ is dropped. I personally know of almost no one who can get his/her head around what’s necessary to re-jig for survival.
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Well, I’m 81 years old, so, it seems I’ll never be as rich as President Musk ?
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Seems you have to put more aside than $500 a week.
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How does a person comment on those numbers. The entire idea is numbing to say the least. Millions of years for an average person to accumulate that much money. I don’t quite see what Musk, Bezos and the rest of the super greedy would need more power for. Oh right, they’re big tough Americans and the new sheriffs in town.
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