So is Bezos our modern day Carnegie or Rockefeller?
Nope. Those guys managed to be quite a bit richer, by a substantial factor.
Jeff Bezos Is Now the World's Second Richest Person
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Re: Jeff Bezos Is Now the World's Second Richest Person
#22For all the hype Silicon Valley gets, the companies of the world's 2 richest people are in the Seattle area.
People are usually including Amazon and MS when they use the metonym "Silicon Valley".
Really meant San Fran. An extreme disproportionate amount of investment dollars go there considering just how much value has come out of Seattle with much less starting capital.
Re: Jeff Bezos Is Now the World's Second Richest Person
#23For all the hype Silicon Valley gets, the companies of the world's 2 richest people are in the Seattle area.
Seattle* is an anomaly. Roughly the 100th city worldwide by size, yet has 2 of the 5 largest companies in the world by market cap.
* Technically Seattle metro area
Re: Jeff Bezos Is Now the World's Second Richest Person
#24For all the hype Silicon Valley gets, the companies of the world's 2 richest people are in the Seattle area.
People are usually including Amazon and MS when they use the metonym "Silicon Valley".
Similar to how the term "Wall Street" isn't limited to the firms physically located on Wall Street in lower Manhattan.
Re: Jeff Bezos Is Now the World's Second Richest Person
#25Some fun facts: Jeff Bezos owns 80.9 million shares of AMZN (or did in September), which is about 17% of the company. Over 60% of the company is held by institutional shareholders, led by Vanguard. His annual salary is $100K. He appeared in Star Trek Beyond as a Star Fleet official. In his spare time, he runs a spaceship company.[1]
I've always admired Amazon and have been a customer of theirs since the late 90s when it was mainly a bookseller. For a while I owned a few hundred shares, but sold them for a slight profit. Had I held onto them... sigh...
Jeff Bezos is one of America's great entrepreneurs, along with Gates, Musk, Ellison, and a handful of others. This is America at its best. We could do worse than to produce such amazing and successful technology innovators.
Re: Jeff Bezos Is Now the World's Second Richest Person
#26So is Bezos our modern day Carnegie or Rockefeller?
As a reference example, Rockefeller was worth over $300 billion in 2007 dollars:
https://www.google.com/search?q=Rockefeller&oq=Rockefeller&a...
Re: Jeff Bezos Is Now the World's Second Richest Person
#27Earlier quoted context omitted.
People are usually including Amazon and MS when they use the metonym "Silicon Valley".
Really meant San Fran. An extreme disproportionate amount of investment dollars go there considering just how much value has come out of Seattle with much less starting capital.
Wasn't Microsoft founded in Albuquerque?
Re: Jeff Bezos Is Now the World's Second Richest Person
#28With a little math, we are not-too-many years from the world's first US$ trillionaire.
Using Mr. Bezos as the example:
US$ 72,000,000,000
Annualized gain of, say, 10% on AMZN stock
Over a period of 27.6 years
1.1^27.6 * US$72,000,000,000 = ~US$ 1,000,000,000,000
Just in time for his 80th birthday.
Re: Jeff Bezos Is Now the World's Second Richest Person
#29How is Bezos making money? Amazon doesn't seem to generate enough dividends to reach this amount of wealth, or does it?
It's only by choice that Amazon doesn't generate dividends.
Re: Jeff Bezos Is Now the World's Second Richest Person
#30Any reason why the Rothchilds never show up in these lists? My best guess there is some sort of "who's the richest game" for some new money players (who's fortune can be tracked), where old money prefers obscurity.
http://www.snopes.com/rothschild-family-wealth/ Basically, after three generations a single persons wealth is distributed out enough to get dropped from these sorts of lists. Jeff might be the 2nd richest in the world - it's highly unlikely his grandchildren will be ranked as such.
Good point. One family that is directly measurable however: offspring of Sam Walton. Bill G is a distant second by that yard stick: https://www.forbes.com/profile/walton-1/