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

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

#181

Post by Red_Leaves_Flyy »

tharne wrote: post #140
missedthecue wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He pays all of his employees no less than what Bernie Sanders considers a living wage. At what point would people be satisfied that Bezos pays enough?

Never. People with a scarcity mindset tend to be resentful of anyone who's achieved any level of success greater than their own.

Bezos hasn’t achieved anything of note himself. He’s exploited those around stealing from all of his employees to create an empire of exploitation the world over. He’s a leech. A parasite. Pass the salt.

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

#182

Post by BHSPitMonkey »

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

Complain to your senators, then? Congress is who sets the algorithm defining how taxes are owed, not the taxpayers themselves. Have you ever written the IRS a check for more than what you owe them (or declined to accept a tax refund)?

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

#183

Post by jgmmo »

pcrh wrote: post #162

It's seriously distracting that the headline describes these recipients as "CNN contributors"....

why? that was first thing I thought when Bezos said he was giving Van Jones the prize... 'what... a CNN commentator? that's like giving Sean Hannity free money...'

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

#184

Post by chasd00 »

ianai wrote: post #7
catillac wrote: post #2

There will be a lot of cynicism on this post from the HN crowd, but these are unbelievably good recipients. I have interacted with Jose Andres many times, and go to his DC restaurants when I visit, and he is truly a wonderful soul who spends all his effort helping others. I don’t know much about Van Jones beyond what I see on TV, but if he’s of the same character as Jose Andres, that is stellar and they will both do…

Agree. They seem like good choices. Maybe he’s making a pivot now that he’s retired from Amazon? I will caution people to not read too little or too much into this. Personally I live by the maxim of “I don’t need a reason to do something nice, but I do need a reason to do something mean.” So I suggest we all wait and see what else he does before further analysis.

probably attempting to buy his way into heaven now that his fortune has been won. The same thing Gates is doing.

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

#185

Post by zapnuk »

If billionaires entrust their money to more or less random people for philanthropic objectives I rather have them be taxed higher and let a (somewhat inefficient) government decide how to invest the money.

At least I had a role in electing the government and can change my vote based on their performance.

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

#186

Post by boringg »

hemloc_io wrote: post #138
Zelphyr wrote: post #9

All the critics lobbing cynicism against Bezos, Branson, and Musk saying, in essence, that their money is better spent here at home reminds me of a wonderful scene from The West Wing when one character asks why we have to go to Mars: "'Cause it's next. For we came out of the cave, and we looked over the hill, and we saw fire. And we crossed the ocean, and we pioneered the West, and we took to the sky. The history of…

I don't think it's really fair to lump Bezos, Branson, and Musk into the same bucket. Musk, for all his flaws, started an actual rocket company with new and frankly insane tech. Bezos and especially Branson's ventures feel much more like personal vanity projects than something that will actually push space exploration. I mean Blue Origin has been running for 20 years and the best we have from them is flights that wer…

Just a minor correction here- SpaceX has been around for 20 years as well.

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

#187

Post by lordnacho »

techrat wrote: post #90
TechBro8615 wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

No. The people they employ pay the payroll taxes out of their salary. No company pays payroll taxes for their employees.

This is more complicated than you make it out to be.

The person who literally sends the money according to the law is not the same as the one who pays in the economic sense.

For instance, you could transfer the legal obligation to the other party, but that would change the negotiating position between the employer and the employee.

Similarly, you can add a sales tax to some product, and make the company that sells the product collect it and forward it to the government, but that doesn't mean that the company is worse off the that amount. The pie is split according to some negotiating position.

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

#188

Post by courtf »

tdfx wrote: post #36
kmnc wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean, when you take your inspiration from television and sci-fi movies it does seem like rich people doing vanity ego projects is the best way for us to survive as a species. Assuming you mean mean the "rich" when you say species, because unless you are watching different movies then me the non rich don't survive or are turned into a slave class. The Earth...well its prospects are even grimmer. It is stupid to be c…

> I don't buy the idea that spending on getting the hell off of Earth is the best way to save the species What are the alternatives? On a long enough timeline, it won't be possible for life to survive here. And even on shorter timelines, trusting in untested asteroid deflection plans seems pretty risky, as well. Seems that diversifying ourselves in multiple locations as soon as possible is the best way to guarantee s…

There's no reason to believe we can sustain human life on Mars. Immense technical and biological hurdles stand in the way of that being possible, much less worth focusing on while the planet that does sustain life can still be saved. Believing the human race needs to go to another planet in our solar system to survive is philosophical suicide for sci-fi fans, akin to believing that saving Earth is futile because the rapture is imminent. To the degree that it distracts from the very real problems on Earth that must be solved and are in fact less daunting than living in Mars, it may even contribute to our literal suicide as a species.

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

#189

Post by GravitasFailure »

pb7 wrote: post #165
throwaway2048 wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

In the US, you would get $600/week on top of the usual unemployment (which is 60% of your regular wage) which amounts to significantly more than Canada. For a minimum wage worker, that would be over $40K/year.

Don't forget that money is exempt from federal taxes for the 2020 tax year and isn't taxed at all by many states.

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

#190

Post by gonehome »

nomel wrote: post #159
ohgodplsno wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bezos doesn't sell stock. What little he does goes into Blue Origin and is written off again. When Bezos needs cash, he just borrows from the bank using his shares as collateral. No taxes.

Borrowing mean returning the money at some point. Where does this money come from, and how isn't it taxed?

Person dies, wealth gets inherited at new cost basis, heirs pay off loans with new (higher) cost basis, tax revenue isn’t collected.

At least that’s the model as I understand it.

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