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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

#831

Post by anigbrowl »

bpt3 wrote: post #796
anigbrowl wrote: post #742

Earlier quoted context omitted.

S/he did in the first sentence. Please don't engage in this sort of verbal aggression.

They did not. If you're referring to "living wage", that's not an objective or widely accepted metric. Please don't jump into conversations and chastise people for no reason, especially when you're incorrect.

It's a widely discussed, easily understood, and thus popular yardstick, both among economists and the general public. I think you know this quite well. This isn't high school debate club and barking orders at people like 'define fairly' isn't clever, just rude.

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

#832

Post by Salgat »

BHSPitMonkey wrote: post #182
eli wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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)?

That's the entire point of this conversation, we want higher taxes and more people (voters) need to be convinced of this fact.

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

#833

Post by bart_spoon »

rgbrgb wrote: post #149
throwaway0a5e wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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.

You are missing the point. You, as an individual living in 2021, have the power of a state as recent as 100 years ago, in many ways. Is that also appalling?

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

#834

Post by bpt3 »

anigbrowl wrote: post #831
bpt3 wrote: post #796

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They did not. If you're referring to "living wage", that's not an objective or widely accepted metric. Please don't jump into conversations and chastise people for no reason, especially when you're incorrect.

It's a widely discussed, easily understood, and thus popular yardstick, both among economists and the general public. I think you know this quite well. This isn't high school debate club and barking orders at people like 'define fairly' isn't clever, just rude.

So you've decided to unilaterally determine my intent and tone, appoint yourself the arbiter of behavior, and inject yourself into a conversation to double down on your incorrect stance (from Wikipedia: "Due to the flexible nature of the term 'needs', there is not one universally accepted measure of what a living wage is...") and lecture me about rudeness?

I'll pass on continuing this conversation, thanks.

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

#835

Post by 3wayMerger »

mewpmewp2 wrote: post #822
vk23 wrote: post #816

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree that at some point there will be a decrease in risk taking and investments but I don't think that risk and investments are inherently more important than all other factors. I am also not arguing for 1000:3 or any other specific ratio. The only reason I brought his net worth up is to show the ratio that we have right now (not even including the ratio compared to amazon workes which would be even higher). And e…

It would be definitely interesting to see what would happen and amazing to test out if we could have two parallel universes where in one you will increase taxes. I wonder if there are any economic simulations done that would represent the actual world most closely to have something to toy with.

What if instead of paying Bezos paying more taxes, he has to pay his workers more? I think it's wrong to just force Bezos to give away his wealth. However, I also think that some Amazon workers should be payed more.

I don't think Bezos would have had the same amount of success with Amazon, if he had to do everything himself without hiring any other people. I believe most successful achievements were achieved through the work of many people. In the villagers and apples example, if the one man was able to produce 1000 apples by himself, I agree that the one man should be able to keep all 1000 apples to himself. However, if the one man was only able to produce 1000 apples with the work of others, I think that the workers should be receive a "fair" share of the produce. I don't have an idea or definition of what "fair" would be but 266,666 to 1 apple doesn't seem very "fair".

I don't see Bezos as being bad or evil but I see the fact that his workers don't get payed more as unfair. It's kind of like the "thank you essential workers for keeping the society functioning during the pandemic" phase that America had last year. We call these workers "essential" but their pay doesn't reflect that title. Some of the work that these "essential workers" do might be simple unskilled labor, but it is necessary work. Even if the work itself might not be of something that demands better pay, I believe the fact that the work is necessary is something that demands better pay. And if one person has 266,666 apples, I think there are enough apples to go around to pay the "essential workers" more. I just don't think it's "fair" that some "essential workers" who are earning close to minimum wage will never have the same opportunities that others in more lucrative fields (e.g. software engineering) will because of financial limitations.

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

#836

Post by weare138 »

fighterpilot wrote: post #33
weare138 wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>It's how we get to the moon We already did that. Why not just support NASA?

Because something like VTOL rockets can only be innovated by a private company focused on unit economics and scale economies. Government is good when the public externalities are large, the private benefit is small and there's an extremely large capital requirements. This is not the case any longer for rocket tech, and so it makes zero sense to have the government do it. It'd be like asking the government to make sma…

> Because something like VTOL rockets can only be innovated by a private company focused on unit economics and scale economies.

What? That makes no sense. We already had a reusable vehicle for space flight. We've had it for decades now. It's called the Space Shuttle. NASA developed it in 1981. Just support NASA and science for the public good. Do you really want a handful of billionaires in control of space exploration? They do it for their own benefit not ours.

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

#837

Post by pb7 »

3wayMerger wrote: post #835
mewpmewp2 wrote: post #822

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It would be definitely interesting to see what would happen and amazing to test out if we could have two parallel universes where in one you will increase taxes. I wonder if there are any economic simulations done that would represent the actual world most closely to have something to toy with.

What if instead of paying Bezos paying more taxes, he has to pay his workers more? I think it's wrong to just force Bezos to give away his wealth. However, I also think that some Amazon workers should be payed more. I don't think Bezos would have had the same amount of success with Amazon, if he had to do everything himself without hiring any other people. I believe most successful achievements were achieved through…

>What if instead of paying Bezos paying more taxes, he has to pay his workers more? I think it's wrong to just force Bezos to give away his wealth. However, I also think that some Amazon workers should be payed more.

Amazon already pays the most for this type of work. So how much should they pay?

>We call these workers "essential" but their pay doesn't reflect that title.

The work is essential but the workers are easily replaceable, with the exception of medical staff whose pay is appropriate.

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

#838

Post by jjj123 »

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…

There are two main disagreements I have with this point. They’re values based, so I don’t expect to change your mind, but to give you some perspective on why people roll their eyes at these stunts:

1. I don’t think we should be looking towards “what’s next” when we have plenty of more pressing issues to solve here and now. I’d rather we more equitably distribute resources so everyone has food, healthcare, and housing before we start trying to colonize mars.

2. I would rather the money be spent in a more democratic way. I don’t want to let a few people decide “what’s next” for me, let’s redistribute that wealth and let the public decide what’s most pressing.

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

#839

Post by strikelaserclaw »

joshuahaglund wrote: post #80

I just think this money shoulda been paid in taxes so we could collectively solve problems instead of some guy hand picking a couple lottery winners.

Like no one is going to willing give money to the us gov't in the name of taxes. Our tax code should be updated so that corps pay the taxes.

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

#840

Post by verdverm »

misiti3780 wrote: post #472
verdverm wrote: post #446

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Guess you didn't hear how they sued the govt because they lost the NASA contract?

https://www.theverge.com/2021/4/26/22404528/nasa-bezo-blue-o...

and they have already taken tax payer dollars https://www.nasa.gov/press-release/nasa-awards-launch-servic...

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