Hello Steemers, I am new to the community and looking forward to feeling at home here.

I will be buying couple of thousand of steem within the coming days but I was wondering what is the total amount of steem that will ever be out there? Secondly how does steemit afford to pay the writers on this platform?

So far I really love the concept of steemit, it is better than facebook or twitter because it is like a social media that pays you.