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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

#151

Post by BingoAhoy »

prepend wrote: post #127
cassac wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It deserves cynicism. If he wasn’t a jerk he’d just pay his employees more and maybe pay some taxes. When everyone is fair upfront they don’t need to give us free turkeys on thanksgiving we can buy our own.

> pay his employees more Doesn’t Amazon pay highest in its industry? I suppose people always want more, but it seems like they are already among the best. Of course pay varies by location and what’s good in one state is good in another. But it seems the average warehouse worker pay is $12.61 [0] with states ranging from $9.66 for North Carolina (holy cow) to $14.84 in Washington [1]. Amazon pays $16/hour [2] so that’…

Not an odd complaint considering he's worth 207 billion. He could more fairly divide that stock wealth among Amazonians. Question is: that 207 billion, did he accumulate that fairly himself or did his workforce accumulate that for him? Hard to answer from the outside but could a single man accumulate 207 billion without help as a corporation of one.

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

#152

Post by 015a »

pb7 wrote: post #129
015a wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So its alright for rich CNN contributors to get handouts from Bezos, but unacceptable for average Americans?

It's his money, he can do whatever he wants with it. It's the same freedom afforded to everyone in this country.

I would bet similar things were said in 1790s France.

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

#153

Post by JumpCrisscross »

edmundsauto wrote: post #65
chroem- wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A core tenet of communist ideology is violent overthrow of democratic governments to implement a "dictatorship of the proletariat". Both are rooted in violence.

Aren't democracy and communism orthogonal? Admittedly, I'm not a scholar, but it seems to me that democracy is mostly concerned w/ how leaders are chosen. Whereas communism is about how resources are distributed. It sounds possible to have a democratically elected government that sets a communist economic policy.

> Aren't democracy and communism orthogonal?

Theoretically, yes. Practically, if you concentrate all ownership in the state you remove the means by which private citizens can check it.

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

#154

Post by ALittleLight »

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…

But you have to repay those loans eventually incurring the tax burden when you do, right?

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

#155

Post by [deleted] »

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…

[deleted]

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

#156

Post by ironrabbit »

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…

Interesting, but how do you pay off these loans except by later selling stock (and paying capital gains tax)?

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

#157

Post by BHSPitMonkey »

chroem- wrote: post #54
jjulius wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I ctrl+f'd "Lenin" on Van Jones' Wiki page, and this is literally the only time Lenin is mentioned: >He became affiliated with many left activists, and co-founded a socialist collective called Standing Together to Organize a Revolutionary Movement (STORM). It protested against police brutality, held study groups on the theories of Marx and Lenin, and aspired to a multi-racial socialist utopia.[13] I'm not sure how be…

Does co-founding a Leninist organization not make one a Leninist? Why would you create an organization if you don't believe in its ideals?

Are we supposed to take your word for it that it's a "Leninist organization"? Your only supporting evidence for that idea is the passage above mentioning that members of the group studied ideas from Lenin (and others), but that alone is not enough to make an organization "Leninist" (if it were, then I guess our high schools are all Marxist/Leninist/Nazi organizations too since we studied and discussed those beliefs there).

It is possible (necessary, even) to study, discuss, and debate all of history's notable policial/socio-economic ideologies and movements, regardless of which ideals you yourself hold (and which actions of those movements' prominent figures you view as justifiable).

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

#158

Post by beerandt »

cowgoesmoo wrote: post #143
beerandt wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Yeah- but you postpone it indefinitely, or pay it back in a year where you have negative income or other circumstances that afford a better tax situation.

Or get sneaky and attempt other "creative" legally questionable solutions, like having an entity you control buy that debt from the bank and hold it while giving you a 0% rate, or something similar.

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

#159

Post by nomel »

ohgodplsno wrote: post #124
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?

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?

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

#160

Post by Ostrogodsky »

pb7 wrote: post #102
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"…

>These billionaires made many billions on covid, while you got a 1400 dollar check so you could survive. They made billions from excellent businesses on which the world relied during a time of crisis. What would people have done without the likes of Amazon and fast delivery of nearly everything? >These billionaires pay their workers minimum wage every day. No one makes minimum wage at Amazon. >People can't get toilet…

> They made billions from excellent businesses on which the world relied during a time of crisis. What would people have done without the likes of Amazon and fast delivery of nearly everything?

And the people earning the low wages were all doing crappy jobs? Did Bezos personally deliver all the packages? I mean you can be as capitalistic as mr Moustache (or whatever he is called) from Monopoly,but you have to agree this is equivalent to defending the feudal lords who "gave" us their lands so we could all eat.

> No one makes minimum wage at Amazon.

They make 17 USD/h. Double in actual dollars from 1975 minimum wage. College, medicine, housing have increased 5-10 times. In 1975 the richest man in America (Howard Hughes) had around 11 billion of CURRENT dollars, 5% of Bezos. It is Bezos 20X as productive?

Meanwhile in the real world : https://www.digitalcommerce360.com/2020/12/18/amazons-wareho...

Amazon is colony of locusts,devoring everything in front of them.

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