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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

#391

Post by Engineering-MD »

sandworm101 wrote: post #370
Engineering-MD wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interesting idea for a measurement! That amount of money can certainly buy an army, but doesn’t account for equipment, logistics etc. Comparing it directly to military expenditure by states is interesting [1,2]: If spent over a single year it would be 3rd highest expenditure (second is China with 150-228 billion) Could fund a military the same as France or Britain for 3 years Equals the combined spend of Britain Fran…

In many places soldiers can be had for far far less than 80k. In Africa or Iraq, $5k can buy you a man with a gun to follow you around for a year.

Definitely. You could spend twice the amount India does on military, and they have an army of 1.4 million

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

#392

Post by tajen »

coldtea wrote: post #36
godzillabrennus wrote: post #10

Hardly. He’s a pauper compared to John D. Rockefeller who died in 1937. At the time of his death his assets equaled 1.5% of America’s total economic output. With a $20T GDP that would be a $300B net worth in today’s dollars or around 200% what Bezos is worth. Don’t worry. This second gilded age that we are living in is on track to ensure we have a trillionaire in short order.

> With a $20T GDP that would be a $300B net worth in today’s dollars or around 200% what Bezos is worth. That's close enough, and hardly make him "a pauper compared to JDR". And of course, you got to also examine how the rest of "America’s total economic output" was divided back in JDR era compared to today. Perhaps JDR had 1.5% of US output, but the rest was more equally distributed. E.g. today Bezos might have "jus…

Plus Jeff Bezos is only in his 50ies, if he’s 0.75% of USA’s GDP now, he may well be the double by the next 30 years.

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

#393

Post by carusooneliner »

fullshark wrote: post #151
vlunkr wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are average Americans losing purchasing power? This is a real question, I don't know where to look that up.

Goods are cheaper, Rent + College Education + Healthcare is much more expensive.

Some explanation why it's so, courtesy this obituary of William Baumol: https://www.wsj.com/articles/baumol-diagnosed-the-disease-of... (paywall)

An excerpt from the article:

"Dr. Baumol’s insight in the 1960s was that costs inevitably rise fastest for things that are difficult to automate, including medical care, garbage collection and the live performance of a Mozart string quartet.

It came to him in the middle of the night.

“It was 4 in the morning,” he recalled in an oral history. “I suddenly woke up and said I know why those costs are going up! I got up, wrote down a few notes, and went to sleep again.” His theory became known as Baumol’s Cost Disease."

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

#394

Post by gremlinsinc »

dragonwriter wrote: post #378
gremlinsinc wrote: post #369

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except there are plenty of 'loopholes'. 1. Superpacs. 2. DNC Fund. (Automatically went to clinton in many cases, so it was another bucket of cash for her campaign. It should've been split evenly in the primary between her and other primary runners. 3. Promises. 'Hey larry, when you're out of congress, let us know if you want to work for our Posh lobby firm. Comfy pay and benefits'. 4. There own interests. Cheney / Ha…

> I don't know the answer to get rid of all corruption, but how is it that ISP's were able to give money to politicians who voted against net neutrality? There are four things that are often described by activists and the media as donations by corporations (sometimes combined, sometimes just one or the other—the first and third seem to be the most common where dollar figures are given, because they are most readily a…

you could ban all political donations. Period.

Have a political fund, for each election. Every person gets the exact same amount. They cannot use own money or donations. They must use the money given. Whoever wins off that level playing field deserves to be the winner.

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

#395

Post by sjg007 »

jacques_chester wrote: post #388
sjg007 wrote: post #342

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fox News is a cable channel.. Murdoch is selling off Fox entertainment. And only a few of the Fox broadcast affiliates are owned by Fox. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Fox_television_affilia... https://www.bbc.com/news/business-42329731 Hell you could start an Internet TV channel and still be successful.

I was wrong about cable. That said, the Murdochs are not selling Fox Network, which is usually what folks are thinking of in this context. They're selling the movies, TV series etc in exchange for a juicy slice of Disney.

They are selling 21st Century Fox.

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

#396

Post by sdljfslkjfdsj »

xkjkls wrote: post #304
sdljfslkjfdsj wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Every single risk asset. Bonds (lowest yields in recorded history including negative sovereigns in europe), stocks (price-to-sales, price-to-ebidta, & countless other measures), art, housing prices back at nominal pre bubble highs, leverage in margin accounts, public debt, central bank balance sheets, etc. That was just from the back of my mouth. Not only is it a bubble but it's quite possibly the largest & most syst…

I agree that based on historical prices, a large number of assets appear to be at the high end of valuation, but I don't know if it is already correct to call that a "bubble". I prefer the Cliff Asness bubble definition, "the term bubble should indicate a price that no reasonable future outcome can justify." Looking at a lot of those markets, it is definitely possible to see future outcomes that make the current pric…

they don't ring a bell at the top. i reiterate this is the largest & most systemic of all bubbles of all time.

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

#397

Post by xkjkls »

sdljfslkjfdsj wrote: post #396
xkjkls wrote: post #304

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree that based on historical prices, a large number of assets appear to be at the high end of valuation, but I don't know if it is already correct to call that a "bubble". I prefer the Cliff Asness bubble definition, "the term bubble should indicate a price that no reasonable future outcome can justify." Looking at a lot of those markets, it is definitely possible to see future outcomes that make the current pric…

they don't ring a bell at the top. i reiterate this is the largest & most systemic of all bubbles of all time.

Everything doesn't "pop" though. I agree that we should expect lower longterm returns over the next few years. However, the difference between the NASDAQ in 2000 and "we expect the average annual return on the S&P 500 to be 4% for the next ten years"

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

#398

Post by speedplane »

RugnirViking wrote: post #360
speedplane wrote: post #352

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're minimizing the value of "certificates with prestige". The reason they are valued is that they are a very quick and easy indicator of ability, even if they are only moderately accurate. It's incredibly difficult to judge the ability of someone who is self-taught, you have to dig into their self-study plan and prior projects. If you need to evaluate and sort 10 candidates in 2 hours, you don't have time for that…

And not only that, it's crazy how much the simple act of going to a university and surrounding yourself with other university educated people contributes to raised wages. For example, I have met a factory worker who through the internet have read a ton and learned several topics to a high level in his free time and he is undoubtably driven but there are so many behvioural and cultural reasons why people would pass ov…

This is a common argument, but not sure I buy it. Sure, going to university helps a person identify established business and social norms, but so does working and interacting in society.

Anti social folks who don’t go to college will very likely still be anti-social if they do.

The main benefit of a standardized certificate is that it helps people evaluating your skills do so more easily. There’s no question that a smart hard-working self-taught super-social person will have a harder time than a less skilled person who has a respected institutions stamp of approval.

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

#399

Post by nojvek »

calcifer wrote: post #187
ralusek wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Seriously, there should be a law against this. This is almost bordering on inhumane practices.

A billionaire built on modern slavery?

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