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here's an economics lesson brought to you by yours truly because i might as well put the economics part of my major to use. bts and the "$3.6 billion dollar net worth" claim: a thread
when people say bts brings $3.6 billion into the economy, they're talking about the net economic impact that bts has had on the south korean economy. this means that researchers looked at sales in korea that have been caused by bts & estimated their overall monetary effect.
examples include an increase in tourism to south korea, an increase in exports of goods and services from south korea (like clothes), and other increases that could have been caused by an interest in the south korean markets due to bts's international fame.
this number basically just estimates bts's impact on the "korean wave" aka hallyu. as bts becomes more popular, they continue generating a massive interest in other korean ventures, including food, clothes, tourism, movies, dramas, etc.
so no, bts is not "worth $3.6 billion." bts does not, and never did, own $3.6 billion. individually they all likely have net worths of around $5-10 million, which includes personal brands and is before personal liabilities. together that number is likely around $50-60 million.
this is a lot of money for sure, but it is only a small fraction of even $1 billion. let me use an old example: assuming jungkook has a net worth of $7 million, 7 million seconds = 81 days, or less than 3 months. 1 billion seconds = 32 YEARS.
there are real billionaires like jeff bezos who not only hoard obscene amounts of money, but make it solely by exploiting/abusing min wage workers. bts don't have anywhere near that kind of money, and they also don't make it by sitting at home & exploiting warehouse workers.
someone's net worth is still not the money that they actually own, too. they own even less than the numbers i estimated before. so in conclusion, stop making claims that make no sense, and you are not the white comrades you think you are.
