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Jeff Bezos's Net Worth Just Broke $100B

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Re: Jeff Bezos's Net Worth Just Broke $100B

#101

Post by hidenotslide »

matt4077 wrote: post #69
hidenotslide wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

P/E is a very meaningful metric. It's not that Amazon has infrastructure that matters, it's that they are reinvesting their earnings at a higher rate than other companies. If they returned capital to investors because they didn't have enough potential projects, then the investors would need to decide how to reinvest it. Your comment about reflecting the infrastructure in valuation would lean toward looking at Price/B…

Increases in "book value" are reflected in earnings. Example: you make a profit of $100. You use those $100 to buy the Brooklyn Bridge. Your profit is still $100. It's only your cash flow that's now at $0.

The difference is stocks vs. flows. $100 capex only shows up in year one, but the balance sheet goes up permanently (depreciating of course). When the parent mentions "level of infrastructure" it refers to the balance sheet account, which is why I mentioned P/B.

Re: Jeff Bezos's Net Worth Just Broke $100B

#102

Post by cityzen »

rukittenme wrote: post #95
cityzen wrote: post #72

Interesting talk from Bernie Sanders about wealth inequality and the state of the economy: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ao7iC9b5Mk0&feature=youtu.be I know it's "political" but so is an individual having a net worth of $100 billion. It is well worth the watch unless, of course, you're a billionaire snowflake and don't like the reality that there are 500,000 homeless people and 45 million people living under the po…

Jeff Bezos having $100bn is no more political than me having $20. Where you draw the line is completely arbitrary. Bezos didn't acquire his fortune by stealing from people. He made it by providing goods at a lower cost than his competitors. Which means everyone that helped make Bezos wealthy are wealthier as a result of that interaction.

I do not know how reliable this is but it looks legit. If it is true, Amazon spending almost $10 million on lobbying and is the 15th highest spender when it comes to spending. Top issue? Taxes. How is Bezos so f’ing rich? Amazon doesn’t pay any real taxes, prob less than 1%.

I’m sorry but your $20 is not the same as his $100 billion

http://www.opensecrets.org/lobby/clientsum.php?id=D000023883

Re: Jeff Bezos's Net Worth Just Broke $100B

#103

Post by rukittenme »

cityzen wrote: post #102
rukittenme wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Jeff Bezos having $100bn is no more political than me having $20. Where you draw the line is completely arbitrary. Bezos didn't acquire his fortune by stealing from people. He made it by providing goods at a lower cost than his competitors. Which means everyone that helped make Bezos wealthy are wealthier as a result of that interaction.

I do not know how reliable this is but it looks legit. If it is true, Amazon spending almost $10 million on lobbying and is the 15th highest spender when it comes to spending. Top issue? Taxes. How is Bezos so f’ing rich? Amazon doesn’t pay any real taxes, prob less than 1%. I’m sorry but your $20 is not the same as his $100 billion http://www.opensecrets.org/lobby/clientsum.php?id=D000023883

You got me there. I hate the income tax and the morons who write the tax code. We're in good company on that front... https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/89776304922608435...

Re: Jeff Bezos's Net Worth Just Broke $100B

#104

Post by joering2 »

clubmg wrote: post #47
jandrese wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For what it is worth, Bill spends a lot in the third world, where a more equitable US would have minimal impact on the standard of living.

Meanwhile America looks more and more like a third world country thanks to the billionairs like Besoz and Gates that hog much of the wealth and resources of our country. By hey Amazon Prime and Microsoft 10 are worth it right?

America (North/USA) IS a third world country; it just happened to be very rich third world country; although most of that wealth is borrowed from future (assumptions of earnings aka robbing our children).

Re: Jeff Bezos's Net Worth Just Broke $100B

#105

Post by joering2 »

comboy wrote: post #63
clubmg wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Meanwhile America looks more and more like a third world country thanks to the billionairs like Besoz and Gates that hog much of the wealth and resources of our country. By hey Amazon Prime and Microsoft 10 are worth it right?

It would look more like a third world country without guys like Gates and Bezos. I'm really surprised by all the hate in this thread towards wealthy individuals who worked hard to attain it. Especially in this environment, where people try to figure out ways to be one of them. It's HN FFs. Also, maybe UBI just seems reasonable to Jeff, like it does to many people. He really doesn't need it for anything which he could…

> It would look more like a third world country without guys like Gates and Bezos.

Not it wouldn't. Operating a Windows OS and being able to buy stuff online with one click does not magically make your country a first-world country. Just like country that runs on Linux and operate offline with brick&mortal stores is not automatically a third world nation.

Re: Jeff Bezos's Net Worth Just Broke $100B

#106

Post by barrkel »

cirgue wrote: post #86
barrkel wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Charity is problematic too, though. It's subject to the whims of the wealthy, and worse it's damaging to the dignity of recipients - it denies them agency in their own well-being. I say this having been the beneficiary of charity myself: needing to be grateful to someone else is a kind of psychological servitude. We'd be better off with an economic system that values agency and lives worth living a little more than e…

> Charity is problematic too, though. It's subject to the whims of the wealthy, and worse it's damaging to the dignity of recipients - it denies them agency in their own well-being. What would you have the ultra-wealthy do? Give their wealth to the government? Distribute their wealth evenly to everyone? What is a non-problematic way to use concentrated wealth to help people, in your view?

Structure the economy so that ultra-wealthy don't exist.

I didn't say I knew how to do that. That's the hard problem.

Re: Jeff Bezos's Net Worth Just Broke $100B

#107

Post by barrkel »

Pyxl101 wrote: post #66
barrkel wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Charity is problematic too, though. It's subject to the whims of the wealthy, and worse it's damaging to the dignity of recipients - it denies them agency in their own well-being. I say this having been the beneficiary of charity myself: needing to be grateful to someone else is a kind of psychological servitude. We'd be better off with an economic system that values agency and lives worth living a little more than e…

The charities that Gates tends to invest in don't just distribute goods to needy people. His charities try to tackle core societal problems like fighting malaria in Africa: https://www.gatesfoundation.org/What-We-Do/Global-Health/Mal... https://www.gatesfoundation.org/What-We-Do/Global-Health/Dis... > Working closely with other global programs at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the Discovery & Translational Scie…

The problems are not just agency, but also whimsy.

Charity is basically a combination of guilt assuaging, ego food and social proofing. I think we'd be better off with democratically controlled funding, or economically allocated funding, from a self-sufficient demos, for things like the battle against malaria.

Charities like Gates's typically turn into long-lived foundations which acquire politics and agency of their own, not entirely benign. They need to be connected to their benefactors by some structure of control, like democracy or economics. A big pile of cash and investments isn't that; it's independence from control.

Yes, democracy also has problems, it would be great to figure out something better. But democracy is still better than oligopoly, even if they're benign today.

Re: Jeff Bezos's Net Worth Just Broke $100B

#108

Post by heurist »

tzm wrote: post #2

> Bill Gates was last person to attain 12-figure fortune in 1999 $100B nearly 20 years ago, just before the federal antitrust case decision against Microsoft. Makes me wonder how much concentration of wealth would occur if regulation was not in place.

Rockafeller got up to around $340 billion in today's dollar. Vanderbilt, Carnegie, and a few others built huge fortunes before the trust busters and regulation came along.

Re: Jeff Bezos's Net Worth Just Broke $100B

#109

Post by prklmn »

hidenotslide wrote: post #100
prklmn wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's also very common now for companies to buy back a ton of stock thus lowering the share denominator in the earnings portion of the ratio, while not actually growing revenue much if at all.

You are referring to Earnings/Share, not Price/Earnings. It doesn't matter much anyway, if they can make the same amount of money with less invested capital that should increase their metrics. And there are good tax reasons to prefer share buybacks over dividends as a way to return cash to shareholders.

I was referring to both because EPS is wrapped up into P/E...

P/E = stock price / (earnings / # of shares oustanding)

And it actually does matter because a company can steadily grow EPS while not growing revenue meaning that something might be amiss, but it can easily be overlooked because EPS has been growing. Also, there are plenty of reasons not to want buybacks. Many times companies will buy their stock when it's at highs, thus destroying value for shareholders.

Re: Jeff Bezos's Net Worth Just Broke $100B

#110

Post by cirgue »

barrkel wrote: post #106
cirgue wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Charity is problematic too, though. It's subject to the whims of the wealthy, and worse it's damaging to the dignity of recipients - it denies them agency in their own well-being. What would you have the ultra-wealthy do? Give their wealth to the government? Distribute their wealth evenly to everyone? What is a non-problematic way to use concentrated wealth to help people, in your view?

Structure the economy so that ultra-wealthy don't exist. I didn't say I knew how to do that. That's the hard problem.

You misunderstood my question: What should the ultra-wealthy, who exist in the here and now and will not be evaporating overnight, do if they feel like helping other people?
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