there’s a scene early in [the old Bond film Thunderball] when the minions of SPECTRE, the evil conspiracy, are shown reporting on their profits from dastardly activities. ...
Even the big one — demanding a ransom for two stolen nuclear warheads — is 100 million pounds, $280 million. Adjusted for inflation, that’s about $2 billion — or one-eighth of the Goldman Sachs bonus pool.
It’s just an indicator of how huge top incomes have become that what were once viewed as impressive numbers, the kind of thing only arch-villains might demand, now look trivial. Or maybe the other way to look at it is that we have a lot more arch-villains around than we used to.
PS: Prices haven risen roughly sevenfold since the movie was made. So $280 million is, as I said, around $2 billion in today’s dollars — still a trivial sum by modern Wall Street standards.
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