So, the median salary in the USA is about $50,000 per year. For the sake of this thought experiment, let's say that's enough to live a stable, middle-class life for one year.
In the same vein, following that logic, $100,000 is equal to two years of work. If I were to be handed $100,000, no strings attached, I would be able to not work for two years.
One million dollars is ten times that. If I suddenly became a millionaire, I would be able to sustain a happy, stable, middle-class life without working a day for twenty years.
Now let's double that again. Two million dollars. That's forty years without having to work. Three million dollars? Sixty years. Four million? Eighty years. Five million dollars? I'd never have to work a day in my entire life ever again, and I'd be able to buy any actual material luxury I could ever want (so not, like, stupid superyachts, but things I can actually make use of and enjoy.)
Anything beyond that? In terms of actual quality of life, nothing changes. Ever. There is an upper limit on how much money a person can actually spend in their lifetime without finding vanity projects to throw money away into.
A billion dollars is two hundred times that. A billionaire could afford to live in luxury for two hundred human lifetimes. That's twenty thousand years of not-working.
Elon Musk's net worth is $256,800,000,000. That's five million times our initial yearly salary of $50k. Elon Musk could afford to live in luxury for five million years, or fifty thousand human lifetimes.
Eat the fucking rich.