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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

#471

Post by jl2718 »

mucholove wrote: post #383
ramesh31 wrote: post #375

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>and was able to use his skills, smarts and efforts to achieve the easiest way for me to buy something. And a small loan of $200,000 from his parents. Also that.

You’re supposed to build on the shoulders of giants. His parents went all in on him. That $200,000 was a meaningful amount of money to them. They bet the farm. I personally, want to live in a society which celebrates living on the shoulders of parents. Good for his immigrant father on being able to make this amount of money after having his fortunes erased in Cuba. At some point, we cant be expecting more rags to ric…

Funny to imagine. I did the opposite and spent the first 20 years of my career paying for my birth family, and only now am waking up to the idea of starting my own (family and career). This is a difficult shift in mindset. But ultimately you are right. His obligations to his parents were different but no less serious, maybe more so.

By the way, I claim no hardship or victim status. It gave me a lot of courage to do things I would have been able to do otherwise. The problem was when things settled and they needed me less, and I no longer felt like I had to do anything crazy. Then it was like, “this is it?”.

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

#472

Post by misiti3780 »

verdverm wrote: post #446
misiti3780 wrote: post #429

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree, I think another way to put it is would you rather have your tax dollars spent on advancing rocket technologies (via NASA or equivalent) or would you rather have Bezos spend his after-tax dollars on it. Put like that, it's not a tough decision

Except that both companies are competing for govt money. SpaceX is already serving NASA

blue origin was funded with 0 tax payer dollars as far i can tell.

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

#473

Post by soperj »

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…

>and we pioneered the West

The west was already fully populated.

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

#474

Post by soperj »

fbelzile wrote: post #288
hemloc_io wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I agree, Blue Origin at least was thoughtful enough to use fuel that doesn't emit CO2. Branson is more likable but does seem like he's just trying to defend his title of being the eccentric billionaire, rather than thinking too hard about the future.

Where do you think the H2 comes from?

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

#476

Post by tylersmith »

Salgat wrote: post #353
bluedevil2k wrote: post #295

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Who cares if he had parents invest in his company?!? Why do people jump to that immediately trying to prove what an “evil” guy he is. Guess what...Bezos’s parents paid their taxes on their incomes and saved the money and chose to invest in their son. Why is that a negative? Right place at the right time - there were millions of people in their 20’s in the late 90’s, thousands had $250,000 in cash to start a business,…

I'm not saying he is evil or that he doesn't deserve his success, I'm addressing his point that Bezos isn't just a product of his own talents, but that of his situation and the opportunities he was provided by our society.

Thats an opportunity provided by his parents, not "society". If he owes anyone then it's them.

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

#478

Post by alberth »

fogof wrote: post #424
alberth wrote: post #352

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let's pull on this thread some more. So if I purchase a home and it's my primary dwelling, and the fair market value of my home goes way up (like more than what my homestead cap is) - I should pay INCOME taxes on this UNREALIZED gain? See why this is so bonkers. Don't get me wrong, I'm totally in favor of the super rich to pay more in taxes ... but they are not using any "loop holes" here or getting preferential trea…

In the comment you replied to, the commenter says: > If most of your on-paper net worth is unsellable assets, I don't think it would be much of a stretch to say those wouldn't be subject to a hypothetical wealth tax. Wouldn't a primary dwelling fall under this umbrella?

I don't think so.

A home is a tangible asset easy to sell. Paper shares in a startup is totally different.

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

#479

Post by xorfish »

maccam94 wrote: post #436
superfrank wrote: post #284

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're correct, but that doesn't really change the point I was trying to make Since you've edited your post, I'll respond to the rest. > But they're also just carnival rides for Billionaires, and that's what gets on peoples nerves. If Bezos or Branson had sent someone else up in their place, does that really change anything? Sure, it's expensive and only the super wealthy can afford to go into space right now, but th…

I think it's viewed as wasteful because it doesn't actually get people into orbit, AND it is expensive. Thus, it's only really appealing to rich people with cash to burn. These vehicles aren't even stepping stones to orbital rockets, and orbital launch prices are dropping. It's much more likely that SpaceX will offer tickets to orbit for $25k in the next 5-10 years than it will be for Virgin Galactic to do so. Blue O…

Safety won't be high enough for orbital flights for tourists.

Sending rockets to space is still very prone to failures. Failure rates for unmanned rockets where lower 40 years ago than they are now if you look at the trailing 10 year failure rates. Around 1 in 20 unmanned mission fails.

Failures for manned missions are less frequent, however noone can guarantee you, that the rate is lower than 1%.

https://space.stackexchange.com/questions/8566/what-is-the-s...

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

#480

Post by WalterBright »

monocasa wrote: post #408
WalterBright wrote: post #392

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I googled "cost of Apollo program" and it comes to $257 billion in today's dollars. Also, the economy was considerably smaller in those days, and so the Apollo program took up a much larger share of it.

I've seen a lot of numbers, how about we go with Wiki's $156 and cut the difference? And it doesn't matter what the rest of the economy was doing if we've converted it to today's numbers. The argument you were making was that government was intrinsically bloated, but from my view these private orgs are barely keeping up with 1960s .gov.

Since you're leaving off half the cost, it does make the government bloat look slimmer :-)
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