61–70 of 399 posts
In theory, If you are a CEO, and you knew your stock is in bubble, could you have leverage it and borrow as much as you could for low rate, say $200B or more for 2%, and use that buy whatever business when the bubble burst?
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
This system simply does not work.
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".
I don't see how the wealth of one person, who's wealth is mainly shares in probably the most successful company in the US right now, indicates that we are in a bubble.
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can you please cite putin's monarchic ascendancy? i'm having trouble sourcing even the premise of your claim...
It's hard to nail down Putin's wealth, but some people estimate him to have assets worth somewhere between $10 and $50 billion. http://time.com/money/4641093/vladimir-putin-net-worth/
also, that link uses an unnamed source they themselves call "unreliable" to come up with 200M, as was the basis of the commenter's point.
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Except we actually had a functioning federal government during the last gilded age, so we ended up with things like the Sherman Antitrust Act, and eventually the New Deal. I doubt we'll be so lucky this time around. Things are about to get absolutely brutal for the 90%.
Or the 1%. Something Rich people tend to forget is that the system of law and order we have now prevents armed uprising of the lower classes, which has a history of cropping up during very hard economic times. Not advocating, and I doubt I'd be one of them holding a pitchfork, but it is something to keep in mind.
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Except we actually had a functioning federal government during the last gilded age, so we ended up with things like the Sherman Antitrust Act, and eventually the New Deal. I doubt we'll be so lucky this time around. Things are about to get absolutely brutal for the 90%.
Or the 1%. Something Rich people tend to forget is that the system of law and order we have now prevents armed uprising of the lower classes, which has a history of cropping up during very hard economic times. Not advocating, and I doubt I'd be one of them holding a pitchfork, but it is something to keep in mind.
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> 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.
I'm ex-Amazon and no, I'm not being sarcastic. 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. Amazo…
Would you rather be Pullitzer (advertising magnate) or Vanderbilt (transportation)? I'll take the latter every time from a pure $$$ standpoint. Bezos is actually trying to be both.
That's just unfathomable.
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> 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.
I'm ex-Amazon and no, I'm not being sarcastic. 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. Amazo…
Reminds one of a couple of related posts: > When I worked at Amazon we had to run around the warehouse, bc if our pick rate fell below a certain number we stopped getting paid. There were bottles & bins full of piss at odd points, bc you were penalised for toilet breaks. A co-worker attempted suicide on-site bc of the stress Source: https://twitter.com/OwennnThomas/status/1007957414577090560 > Workers at Amazon wareh…
But he just doesn't care.