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Bezos donates $100M each to CNN contributor Van Jones and chef Jose Andres

cnn.com

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Re: Bezos donates $100M each to CNN contributor Van Jones and chef Jose Andres

#141

Post by tailrecursion »

Hokusai wrote: post #92
havetocharge wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

His employees are free to seek a better paid employment if a jerk they work for underpays them. What's up with this nonstop handout mindset lately?

> His employees are free to seek a better paid employment if a jerk they work for underpays them. So, people have options to stop being poor, people have options to not have to pee in a bottle at work, but they chose to do it, why? Poverty removes many options, lack of good education removes many options, abusive corporations keep options far away. The system is the problem, people is just living in a system manipula…

And the handout-mentality people want to give that abusive system more power by demanding handouts on which they become dependent, and demanding censorship.

Re: Bezos donates $100M each to CNN contributor Van Jones and chef Jose Andres

#142

Post by chrishynes »

omegaworks wrote: post #112
missedthecue wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your own article literally says Jeff Bezos paid almost a billion dollars in federal income tax on $4.2 billion in income last year. Nothing about crazy schemes to minimize or offshore tax liability.

>In 2007, Jeff Bezos, then a multibillionaire and now the world’s richest man, did not pay a penny in federal income taxes. He achieved the feat again in 2011. From 2014 to 2018 his wealth grew by 99B, and he paid under 1B in taxes. Would love a sub 1% effective tax rate.

Increase in value of assets isn't taxable until you sell them -- this applies for the value of your house just the same as Bezos's Amazon stock.

Re: Bezos donates $100M each to CNN contributor Van Jones and chef Jose Andres

#143

Post by cowgoesmoo »

beerandt wrote: post #130
ironrabbit wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Genuine question because I'm out of the loop: it looks to me like the "Bezos doesn't pay taxes" argument is just pointing out that most of his wealth sits in unrealized gains in amazon stock. When he sells stock, he pays taxes. Is there more to it that I'm missing? Is the prevailing argument that we should be paying taxes on unrealized capital gains?

You or me would sell stock and pay taxes. He borrows against the shares, which keeps his votes while cashing out non-taxable income.

But wouldn't he need to sell stock eventually to service the loan payments?

Re: Bezos donates $100M each to CNN contributor Van Jones and chef Jose Andres

#144

Post by weakfish »

kypro wrote: post #115

Kind of genius… My understanding as a Brit is that CNN are known to be supportive of progressive economic policies. I suspect they’re also critical of the existence of billionaires like Bezos in a society where many struggle to feed their families. Bribing influential CNN contributors who hold progressive or far-left economic policies is probably one of the better ways to help shift the media narrative towards one th…

CNN is hardly "far left" - they were highly unfavorable towards Sanders in primaries.

Re: Bezos donates $100M each to CNN contributor Van Jones and chef Jose Andres

#145

Post by throwaway2048 »

rejectedandsad wrote: post #137
peakaboo wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know how to put this in a polite way... Let's just say your brain seems to have gotten too much TV entertainment. These billionaires made many billions on covid, while you got a 1400 dollar check so you could survive. These billionaires pay their workers minimum wage every day. People can't get toilet breaks at amazon warehouse without being harassed. This guy is a world class parasite. There is nothing "we"…

> while you got a 1400 dollar check so you could survive American people had the most generous COVID response of any country in the world, including the Superdole.

this isn't even remotely true, in Canada for instance, if you got laid off during covid, you could get $2000 a month payments unconditionally.

Re: Bezos donates $100M each to CNN contributor Van Jones and chef Jose Andres

#146

Post by qeternity »

eli wrote: post #84
TechBro8615 wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do they not pay payroll taxes for the nearly 100k people they employ?

That's not a proportional share

Without getting into a debate about progressive taxes, Bezos pays far more than his fair share in taxes. The social burden that he creates is microscopic compared to the tax revenue he pays. If he disappeared tomorrow, the national budget would be in worse shape than it is today.

Re: Bezos donates $100M each to CNN contributor Van Jones and chef Jose Andres

#147

Post by JumpCrisscross »

okintheory wrote: post #132
ironrabbit wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Genuine question because I'm out of the loop: it looks to me like the "Bezos doesn't pay taxes" argument is just pointing out that most of his wealth sits in unrealized gains in amazon stock. When he sells stock, he pays taxes. Is there more to it that I'm missing? Is the prevailing argument that we should be paying taxes on unrealized capital gains?

This is my current understanding: Basically, once you're this rich, you can take hundreds of millions or billions of dollars worth of loans to cover anything you'd like to spend. Now, you can make sure that you're actually "losing" money in any given year by having (almost) no realized income. Then, at the end, you die, having never paid taxes. https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/09/briefing/tax-jeff-bezos-w... https://w…

> once you're this rich, you can take hundreds of millions or billions of dollars worth of loans to cover anything you'd like to spend

Didn’t ProPublica show, in their leaked tax returns, that Bezos doesn’t do this?

Re: Bezos donates $100M each to CNN contributor Van Jones and chef Jose Andres

#148

Post by pb7 »

Salgat wrote: post #126
pb7 wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They are paying exactly what they owe otherwise the IRS would come after them. You have equal access to the same infrastructure. Feel free to start a trillion dollar company.

No ones saying otherwise, what we're saying is raise the taxes to something reasonable. >You have equal access to the same infrastructure. Feel free to start a trillion dollar company. And this is such a lazy cop-out that ignores that Bezos had parents who funded his company (to the tune of half a million in today's money) during a time where he was in the right place at the right time. It insane how ignorant people…

VCs hand out millions to all sorts of companies that fail, every single day. This is another common talking point that holds no water. I'll give you $250K (or $500K equivalent) myself if you bet your life on turning it into a billion, let alone a trillion.

Re: Bezos donates $100M each to CNN contributor Van Jones and chef Jose Andres

#149

Post by rgbrgb »

throwaway0a5e wrote: post #52
lefrenchy wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We literally got to the moon before any billionaires bought joy rides to lower orbit, so what you’re saying is proven false already by history? It’s so insane to me that people honestly believe that we need billionaires to fund all their hedonic desires in order to achieve anything good and useful as a society. It’s provably false and frankly an absolutely pessimistic view of society and humanity.

>We literally got to the moon before any billionaires bought joy rides to lower orbit, Once upon a time you needed nation state sponsorship in order to sail across the ocean. It's absolutely insane to me that people don't see that a billionaire can do as a vanity project something that was ~50yr ago only the purview of superpowers as an obvious sign of societal progress.

I think you're articulating exactly what the other commenters find appalling: a single man with the power of a state.

Re: Bezos donates $100M each to CNN contributor Van Jones and chef Jose Andres

#150

Post by monocasa »

pb7 wrote: post #111
kstrauser wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'll explain why that comment almost never makes sense. Let's say your tax rate is 50% and your taxable income is $1,000,000, so you'll owe $500,000 in taxes. If you donate $100,000 to charity as a "tax write-off", now your taxable income is only $900,000 and you'll only owe $450,000 in taxes, but you lost $100,000 to save that $50,000 . At the end of the day, you'll have $50,000 less than if you didn't donate anythi…

Also it's a gift to an individual not a non-profit, which you can't write off at all.

Is it direct from him or did he setup a foundation that he can donate to that disperses the funds?
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