41–50 of 399 posts
It would be interesting to see when/if bitcoin reaches $1 million USD. That Forbes list would get totally disrupted.
If modern history goes back to the 1900s though, Rockefeller still has Bezos beat by more than double: "By the time of his death in 1937, estimates place his net worth in the range of US$300 billion to US$400 billion in adjusted dollars for the late 2000s (decade)." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_wealthiest_historical_...
Time for Bezos to endow a university and some libraries? An earlier major technical university endowed by the richest person of the time is a pretty awesome place... (he says with no bias whatsoever. :-) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrew_Carnegie
33% of that $150B came to him in 2018 alone (he started the year around $100B) and some people still claim that "we're not in a bubble".
most of it is virtual money... He could be worth $50B tomorrow if his company crashes. Still a lot of money though, but $150B don't mean anything. It would be interesting to see when/if bitcoin reaches $1 million USD. That Forbes list would get totally disrupted.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think Bezos is a bad argument for us being in a new guilded age. When you look at Rockefeller, Carnegie, Ford, and perhaps even Gates, they had near total control over some aspect of the American Economy. And they used that control to make incredible profits. Amazon is trying to do the same, but they haven't done so yet. Their retail business is not wildly profitable (if at all). They haven't monopolized online ret…
> Amazon is trying to do the same, but they haven't done so yet. They are not wildly profitable (if at all). They haven't monopolized online retail (and may never be able to do so). Please tell me you're being sarcastic. They're hiding profits and just plowing all the revenue back into the business while undercutting both competitors and their own employees.
It's an open question if Amazon will ever be able to raise prices and reap those promised profits without losing marketshare to the many players that would love to take them down.
Right now I view Amazon as a very profitable web hosting company and a retail non-profit.
Google and Microsoft, for comparison, were both much faster to get to monopoly-level marketshare. Amazon, at 24 years old, still isn't there.
Putin tops him. At these levels the dollar value is not a good measure. Bezos owns shares. If he started selling them their value would quickly drop. Monarchs (Putin) are different. They own things outright, or have such influence that they effectively own things that are legally in other people's names. The Saudi royal house has more wealth under their king's control, although not all in his name. What is scary is t…
can you please cite putin's monarchic ascendancy? i'm having trouble sourcing even the premise of your claim...
Putin tops him. At these levels the dollar value is not a good measure. Bezos owns shares. If he started selling them their value would quickly drop. Monarchs (Putin) are different. They own things outright, or have such influence that they effectively own things that are legally in other people's names. The Saudi royal house has more wealth under their king's control, although not all in his name. What is scary is t…
But he can borrow against his stock holdings at very low rates I am sure, so its effectively as good as cash.
Putin tops him. At these levels the dollar value is not a good measure. Bezos owns shares. If he started selling them their value would quickly drop. Monarchs (Putin) are different. They own things outright, or have such influence that they effectively own things that are legally in other people's names. The Saudi royal house has more wealth under their king's control, although not all in his name. What is scary is t…
Putin's wealth can't be accurately measured by anyone except Putin himself and presumably his financial advisers. It's all just speculation.
I feel that America is in the midst of a new gilded age; instead of Standard Oil, we have Amazon. Like the late 1920s, we saw losses in purchasing power of the average American, the collection of wealth among the top 1%, and disruption of our civic spaces as a result. I think the thing that many Americans aren't aware of was just how violent that time in US history was[1]. The US economy isn't just about how comforta…
I doubt we'll be so lucky this time around. Things are about to get absolutely brutal for the 90%.
Putin tops him. At these levels the dollar value is not a good measure. Bezos owns shares. If he started selling them their value would quickly drop. Monarchs (Putin) are different. They own things outright, or have such influence that they effectively own things that are legally in other people's names. The Saudi royal house has more wealth under their king's control, although not all in his name. What is scary is t…