Viral Video Measures Jeff Bezos’ Massive $122 Billion Fortune In the Most Clever Way

FoodMarch 4, 2020

Jeff Bezos is one of the richest persons on the planet. There’s no contesting that. However, it can be tough to get an idea of how seriously wealthy he is just by looking at the figures of his fortune. One online personality has found an ingenious way to visualize the Amazon CEO’s reported $122 billion net worth.

Wealth in Rice Weight

Yang also assured his viewers that the rice used in the video won’t go to waste as there were five families who would benefit from the supply

Humphrey Yang, a 32-year-old entrepreneur and TikTok creator has taken upon the challenge of counting Bezos’ wealth in grains of rice. The social media personality worked on the prerequisite that one grain of rice equals $100,000. By the end, Yang came to the conclusion that the billionaire’s wealth is the equivalent of a whopping 58 pounds of rice.

All of this came about after he posted a video of himself counting 10,000 grains of rice in attempts to show his audience the scale of a billion dollars. Setting out on the task, he bought a scale, loaded up on rice and got to calculating.

Grossed Out

Some of the sentiments netizens had about the viral video’s subject

Since its posting, the TikTok video has gone viral garnering the attention of numerous Twitter netizens, who have a lot to say on the topic. The public consensus leans toward the negative with lots of people expressing their disapproving opinions on Bezos’ wealth.

One Twitter user even described the Amazon CEO’s ‘disproportionate wealth’ as ‘gross’. Others were more humorous in their tweets with another user pointing out that the phrase ‘eat the rich’ is only one letter away from ‘eat the rice’.

The former is a slogan often used by those critical of the wealth disparity in society. It reportedly originated from a quote French Revolution figure Jean Jacques Rousseau, who said that the poor will figuratively eat the rich when they’re left with nothing to eat.

Glaring Wealth Disparity

The bottom 90% of American control only 26% of the nation’s wealth

Yang’s video going viral comes just in time when the topics of class warfare and wealth disparity are hot in the United States.

According to a recent Bloomberg article, the bottom 50% of Americans have a negative net worth. The dismal report comes from the study of economists Gabriel Zucman and Emmanuel Saez.

The duo’s research has also found that the top 0.1% taxpayers actually have control over 20% of American wealth, despite the years of overall economic growth that the country has experienced.