As of 2019, there are 2,153 billionaires in the world, and in total the ‘ultra-rich’ are worth $8.7 trillion. Jeff Bezos, the creator of Amazon is at the number one spot in the wold with Bill Gates, who created Microsoft, is following at number two.

In one second, Jeff Bezos makes $2,489, and in an hour he makes $8,961,187. In just one week, he makes $1,509,615,384, which means in one year he makes $78,500,000,000.

With the amount of money Jeff Bezos has, he could end world hunger three times over. The United Nations said it would take $30 billion per year to end world hunger. The United Nations officials say that there are 795 million (795,000,000) people in the world who are undernourished.

If Bezos gave $100,000 to each of his warehouse workers, he would still have $1,114,000 left over, which clearly is still a lot of money. So why won’t he help out his workers who are forced to work in terrible conditions? Nick Oates, an Amazon employee, was told on Cyber Monday in 2018 that he would have to  come into work along with the other employees in the building while there was a major snow storm heading towards Kansas City, where he worked. The fulfillment center at the warehouse would pardon those who clocked in late because of the storm, but the people scheduled for work had to work that day.

Just to put it into context, if a person makes the federal minimum wage, which is about $7.25/hr, which would total about $14,500/year, they would have to work for 69,000 years to make one billion dollars. 69,000 years is about 1/4 the time humans have lived on earth.

Allison Waldt, a student at North High has her own opinion about billionaires spending their money on impractical things. “It makes me feel belittled and kind of like a failure for not being able to be as successful.” She also said that billionaires could spend excess money on helping those at the bottom climb up to a comfortable place of living.