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Bill Burr calls on 'billionaires to be put down like rabid dogs' in podcast
(www.the-express.com)
this post was submitted on 14 Feb 2025
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The way I always put it is the difference between $1 million and $1 billion is about $1 billion.
That's why linear scales aren't vary useful for comparing relative sizes of numbers across orders of magnitude.
The very fact that there's an order of magnitude difference is the point of the comparison. There shouldn't be five orders of magnitude between any two people's wealth; it's obscene. Maintaining a linear comparison shows the true nature of the wealth gap.
Both scales are important. Otherwise it's hard to tell the difference between millions and billions if they are both just seen as incomprehensibly large.
Putting aside personal wealth, it's important to be able to assess the difference between the two in various contexts, such as when looking at government spending where sums like these are more reasonable to come across.
It's really not hard to tell the difference between millions and billions. There are multitudinous ways in which that can be achieved, even if you're explaining to a toddler. Anyone who can understand the concept of a log scales can understand the difference between a million and a billion linearly. How many threads in this carpet? Around a million? Cool. And a billion would be what, an entire city? Cool. Easy.
Yes, log scales are important if you put aside personal wealth, but why would you want to put aside personal wealth when it's what we're discussing?
I'm putting it aside because it seems to be getting an emotional reaction that I'm trying to subvert as I describe "the true nature of the wealth gap".
It seems like you are trying to use statistical trickery to diminish the perception of the wealth gap. Whether this is intentional or not, it will elicit an emotional reaction, because spreading awareness of the wealth gap is arguably the most important work our society has to do. And your core argument, that is easier to understand on a log scale, is flawed. That leaves people with a passion for communicating this issue suspicious of your motives in an anonymous forum where billionaires can easily send people or bots to muddy the waters. We do not need your bad take here. It is actively damaging the cause.
The true nature of the wealth gap is that it is linear. Billionaires don't work a thousand times harder than the working class, yet they are paid a thousand times more. They can buy 5000 of your dream car. They can but the entire street containing the house you're desperately saving for, just to keep you out. If I had worked every day since Julius Caesar was in power, earning my annual wage EVERY DAY, I still wouldn't be as rich as Elon Musk. And I'm a better human being than him. Recording these things linearly exposes the obscenity of the problem, and it also makes sense logically. On top of that is the best way to show people they're being had.
There are no statistics in my or any posts in this thread.
That's why I'm using a log scale and trying to subvert emotional reactions. To help spread awareness and communicate about it.
Millionaires are paid a thousand times more. Billionaires are paid a million times more. Using the log scale makes this point a lot better. That's why I'm using it, to expose the wealth gap. On a linear scale, it's really hard to tell the difference between two numbers that are both obscenely larger than what you're used to.
You are muddying the waters with your dismissal of the valid perspective of a log scale, and:
Both the linear and log scales are important for communicating the wealth gap.
Edited for clarity.
Well, I can only explain it to you. I can't understand it for you.
Hey, that's exactly what I was thinking!
How about we recognize that we agree that wealth inequality is a terrible thing that needs to be called out in a way that emphasizes and describes tbe problem.
I like your way of doing it using a linear scale! I just think that mine is better using the log scale.
Why don't you stop being an ass and let me do it my way so that people who think like me can understand it?