We're All Trillionaires Now
Enjoy a $1.22 trillion asset for $2.10 a day
GSMA reports the total investment in global mobile internet connectivity infrastructure at $1.22 trillion over the past five years. This includes spending on end-user devices, with mobile network operators being the largest single group of investors, contributing 45 percent of the total. The remaining investment comes from various sources like tower companies, other network operators, and enterprise spend on devices.
How much does it cost to enjoy in this trillion-dollar asset? About $2.10 a day.
You can buy a new iPhone 16 for $799, with Apple offering zero-percent financing over 24 months. That works out to just $33.29 a month—or about $1.10 a day. The cost of cell phone service with unlimited data starts around $30 a month or under $1 a day. Together, the new phone and wireless service cost about $2.10 a day. After two years, once the phone is paid off, your daily cost drops to around $1 a day.
Unskilled workers today are earning around $17.17 an hour, putting their time price for access to this mobile global internet system at a little over seven minutes a day. For the average U.S. worker earning $36 an hour, that’s less than 3.5 minutes.
A trillion is a million times a million. We haven’t just crossed into the age of millionaires or billionaires—we’ve entered the era of trillionaires. Not in our bank accounts, but in our daily access to tools, knowledge, and global infrastructure that was once unimaginable. We’re all trillionaires now.
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Gale Pooley is a Senior Fellow at the Discovery Institute, an Adjunct Scholar at the Cato Institute, and a board member at Human Progress.
From Grok:
Gale Pooley’s post highlights the democratization of access to a $1.22 trillion mobile internet infrastructure, as reported by GSMA, costing users just $2.10 daily—$1.10 for an iPhone 16 (via Apple’s 0% APR financing over 24 months) and $1 for unlimited data plans, making global connectivity affordable even for unskilled workers earning $17.17/hour, who need only 7 minutes of work to cover this cost.
The concept of “we’re all trillionaires now” redefines wealth not as personal net worth but as access to trillion-dollar systems like mobile networks, which Pooley argues provide unprecedented tools and knowledge, with the average U.S. worker ($36/hour) needing less than 3.5 minutes daily to afford this access, showcasing a dramatic reduction in the time price of technology.