Site of the Day for Monday, March 27, 2023
Wealth, Shown to Scale
Today's site offers an award-winning web design presentation which attempts to
convey the incomprehensible -- namely the extraordinary wealth of the super
rich. Gentle Subscribers may find this eye-opening representation of the wealth
of Amazon founder Jeff Bezos to be beyond understanding.
"$68,000 (Median US household income) ... $185 billion (wealth of Jeff Bezos)
... Jeff is so wealthy, that it is quite literally unimaginable. We rarely see
wealth inequality represented to scale. This is part of the reason Americans
consistently under-estimate the relative wealth of the super rich. Every 10
pixels you scroll is $5 million."- from the website
Initially, the site appears blandly innocuous until little facts begin
appearing, starting with the figures for Mr. Bezos. While the numbers are from
assessments from a few years back, they are so incomprehensibly vast as to be
indifferent to a billion here or there. Little nuggets are studded throughout
the display -- the average lifetime earnings of an American citizen, the cost
of eradicating malaria which kills 800 children a day, and the cost of
chemotherapy treatment for example, while pointing out that only 400 Americans
possess 3.2 Trillion Dollars. Although the directions indicate "to scroll, use
shift + mousewheel" or for touchpad use, "swipe sideways", simply using the
right arrow key also works as does moving the horizontal scroll bar at the
bottom of the page.
Note: Many visitors will give up before reaching the conclusion, an indication
that the human mind truly cannot grasp such numbers.
Sidle over to the site to view a representation of the supremely wealthy at:
https://mkorostoff.github.io/1-pixel-wealth/
A.M. Holm
Comments? Suggestions? amholm@xxxxxxxxxxx
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