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Jeff Bezos Becomes the Richest Man in Modern History, Topping $150B

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Re: Jeff Bezos Becomes the Richest Man in Modern History, Topping $150B

#181

Post by InitialLastName »

TAForObvReasons wrote: post #55
xkjkls wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is anything other than virtual money though?

AMZN stock is currently not legal tender and government agencies and the like are not required to accept it as a form of payment. Can't pay for food with AMZN shares. The US dollar is backed by the "full faith and credit" of the US, which makes it "real" in some sense

In other words, AMZN stock is as real as Amazon the company is, and USD's are as real as the US is. Where one has some assets and some shareholder agreements to back up its reality, the other has guns, a voting populace, and global-scale international recognition in favor of its reality.

Re: Jeff Bezos Becomes the Richest Man in Modern History, Topping $150B

#183

Post by skookumchuck »

bsvalley wrote: post #41

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.

Paper money is 'virtual', too. History shows us that the value of paper money often crashes.

Re: Jeff Bezos Becomes the Richest Man in Modern History, Topping $150B

#184

Post by JumpCrisscross »

CamTin wrote: post #76
whack wrote: post #8

> "Gates would have had a net worth of more than $150 billion if he’d held onto assets that he’s given away, largely to the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation." Sorry Bezos, you've still got some catching up to do. Lifetime earnings are what really count, even if you give it all away to charity.

Why not simply avoid making billions so you don't have to give it all away to assuage your guilt and come out close to neutral?

> assuage your guilt

People who would feel guilty with billions don’t get billions. And I would argue they shouldn’t. If you’re a billionaire, you get to unilaterally do things others can’t. Like pioneer space travel or explore under-appreciated branches of medicine.

Re: Jeff Bezos Becomes the Richest Man in Modern History, Topping $150B

#185

Post by baybal2 »

Fricken wrote: post #165
sidlls wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"About to?" It already is brutal for the bottom half. And the 90th percentile is too low: people in that range are paupers by comparison even to the top 5. I think the 95th to the 99th percentile is the region to look at. There are some seriously deluded individuals in that group who think they won't be on the outside with the rest of us when the top pull the gates closed behind them.

America is a nation of temporarily inconvenienced millionaires. This disconnect between expectations and reality is one of it's biggest problems. You can visit any number of poorer nations where being poor does is not a punishment, it not equate to a difficult or miserable life, because society, it's services and it's infrastructure are all built to accomodate people of modest means. In America is designed for you to…

I capture the essence of the matter perfectly in that last sentence.

Re: Jeff Bezos Becomes the Richest Man in Modern History, Topping $150B

#187

Post by calcifer »

ralusek wrote: post #136
TheOtherHobbes wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You'd think with all that cash Bezos could afford to pay his minions a humane rate. But he just doesn't care.

Aren't their margins like, razor-thin? Obviously at Amazon scale, even razor-thin margins mean huge profits, but that doesn't mean that you have any wiggle room within the profit. Imagine you have 100 people working for you, and off of each person, you make 10 cents a day. Now imagine you grow your business and you have 1,000,000 people working for you. At 10 cents per person per day, you're now making $100,000 a DAY…

If your margins are so thin that people are forced to pee in bottles instead of going to the bathroom then your company shouldn't exist.

Re: Jeff Bezos Becomes the Richest Man in Modern History, Topping $150B

#188

Post by JumpCrisscross »

Endama wrote: post #15

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…

> America is in the midst of a new gilded age

Why not golden instead of gilded? Per capita incomes are at an all time high, in real terms, and growing; violent crime per capita a historical low; and life expectancy high, though it could be higher. We are on the verge of tremendous technological advances in propulsion, AI, biology and energy. And more people are educated enough to wonder at those advancements than ever before.

Re: Jeff Bezos Becomes the Richest Man in Modern History, Topping $150B

#189

Post by agumonkey »

FussyZeus wrote: post #60
aphextron wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It's true that logistically there's always more poor than rich. That said, rich are only one plane ticket away from peace of mind. Surely their money is already distributed digitally so ..

Re: Jeff Bezos Becomes the Richest Man in Modern History, Topping $150B

#190

Post by grenoire »

TheLoneAdmin wrote: post #166
detaro wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If its combined with inhumane conditions as a requirement to stay employed, yes.

So what would you consider a "humane rate" to pay someone to work in inhumane conditions? $20/hr? $100/hr?

You simply do not push them into those inhumane conditions in the first place.
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