[FireBeyond]

> the US government spends orders of magnitude more cash, at much lower levels than the federal level, more than any billionaire does in their life on a yearly basis

Are you really comparing a government responsible for something approaching 350 million people a year and all their infrastructure and support services with a billionaire's lifestyle expenses?

Fun trivia: I once looked at Bezos' net worth and the City of Tacoma, and according to all their records, he could "afford" to buy Tacoma. A city of 220,000 people. Every residential, commercial, industrial, government building in the city. Every street, road and highway. The utilities. All of it. One person... buy a city of a quarter million people.

And I posted about it on HN, thinking people would be similarly agog as I was. Apparently not. Several said "Oh, that's not as much as I thought he could", or "not too bad", etc.

[stainablesteel]

yes i am comparing that, its a legitimate comparison given the context. and i don't know what "lifestyle expenses" you're referencing, these are companies we're talking about. afaik musk doesn't even own a house

and i'd love to know how much bezos could afford if you could provide that link, it sounds interesting. because how much would be left over for him? out of all the US, with all his wealth, would he buy tacoma and then be broke? because that's a pretty small influence if one of the wealthiest people in the world could only afford a city of 220k. that adds to my original point that the government spends way more. any "power" a billionaire has is truly just a drop in massive bucket.

[FireBeyond]

> afaik musk doesn't even own a house

This trope is old, and was never really accurate.

He was living in a $50M mansion at the time, mostly by himself. Flying back and forth between California and Texas almost daily, private.

That the world's second or third richest person "doesn't even own a house" is something that beggars belief, made for a good soundbite. I'm sure he doesn't. I'm sure Elon Holdings VIII Inc. or similar owns plenty of property. Just like he "did everything possible to anonymize his private jet, so it was doxxing him to show its location"... when in reality it is registered to a company with a SpaceX-related name, whose company office is at 1 Space Drive in a city in California, whose address, when you enter it into Google says "Businesses associated with this address: Tesla, SpaceX, The Boring Company". Very anonymous indeed.

> because how much would be left over for him? out of all the US, with all his wealth, would he buy tacoma and then be broke? because that's a pretty small influence if one of the wealthiest people in the world could only afford a city of 220k.

I don't want to diminish Tacoma - I lived there once, but it is a city of 62 square miles and I really struggle to fathom the grandiosity you envision. What would be impressive to you? Seattle? Austin? Phoenix? Chicago?

Presumably he wouldn't be broke, because being the landlord of all those structures would provide rather significant income, no?

I got the data a few years ago, just from the City of Tacoma's tax records and assessed property values.

[stainablesteel]

lol fair enough, i took elon's word for it but i guess i shouldn't be surprised that he owns a house through subsidiaries. he's got to sleep somewhere.

and i think a city of a million would be impressive, i've lived in cities of 100k, 200k, ~6m, 30k, and 350k. even at a million, that's still only ~0.003% of the US population.

while the example makes for a nice way of measuring wealth-to-power, so kudos on that, realistically it makes for a bad investment. you'd get a lot in rent but you'd get crushed in repair fees, insurance, and property tax. plus if someone else really wants to buy that property (or they dislike whoever bought it), its probably cheaper for them to sponsor state-level politicians to raise property tax in some obscure way on only people who own 100+ properties. forcing you to dump everything at once, thereby decreasing prices in the area.