Apple revealed Tuesday that it is sitting on a pile of cash—$145 billion, to be precise—and the company is planning to flush out some of it to shareholders in a manner carefully structured to minimize its tax burden. The staggering wealth Apple has accumulated leads Explainer to wonder about wildly hypothetical scenarios by which Apple could spend its money. For example, how many apples could Apple buy?
Approximately 45 apples for every person on Earth. Red Delicious apples cost an average of $1.39 per pound in the United States, according to data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. There are about three apples in a pound. So assuming an infinite supply of Red Delicious apples, Apple could distribute 45 apples to each member of the world’s population of 7 billion. Those apples would fill up about one-three-thousandth of the Earth’s volume.
There are only 31 companies in the world Apple couldn’t (theoretically) buy with its stockpile of cash, although companies aren’t usually sold at their market price. Other armchair CEOs have advised Apple try to acquire Netflix or Visa or the nation of Hungary, but it’s doubtful either of those companies would settle for a measly $145 billion, and countries aren’t technically for sale.
The cash could buy 38.8 billion gallons of regular unleaded gasoline, or enough to fill up 2.9 billion Honda Civic gas tanks or 1.49 billion Ford F-150 tanks. Apple could alternatively buy 132 million VIP passes to Beyoncé’s show at the Verizon Center, for more than 1 in 3 Americans. The company could give $2.3 million to each of the 62,619 estimated homeless veterans living in the United States. It could administer polio vaccines to 290 million people—the combined population of Afghanistan, Pakistan, Chad, and the Democratic Republic of Congo, countries where polio rages on. The company could buy all the art in the Louvre 1.5 times over. It could acquire 290 Airbus A380 double-decker private jets, which seat 525 passengers, such as the one bought by Saudi prince Alwaleed bin Talal. Or the company could send 95,000 employees, one-sixth of its total in the United States, on a two-year, globe-trotting luxury vacation. Here are some more laugh-to-keep-from-crying stats about Apple’s wealth.
Illustration by Natalie Matthews-Ramo and Illustration of an Airbus by iStockphoto
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