381–390 of 399 posts
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If you have a checking account you probably have more liquid assets than the bottom 3 billion.
3 billion combined? Because that's what the parent comment was implying. Your point hardly seems like a fair comparison.
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"About to?" It already is brutal for the bottom half. And the 90th percentile is too low: people in that range are paupers by comparison even to the top 5. I think the 95th to the 99th percentile is the region to look at. There are some seriously deluded individuals in that group who think they won't be on the outside with the rest of us when the top pull the gates closed behind them.
America is a nation of temporarily inconvenienced millionaires. This disconnect between expectations and reality is one of it's biggest problems. You can visit any number of poorer nations where being poor does is not a punishment, it not equate to a difficult or miserable life, because society, it's services and it's infrastructure are all built to accomodate people of modest means. In America is designed for you to…
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In fairness to Bezos, did anyone think Gates would turn out like this?
The difference between Bezos and Gates reminds me a lot of the difference between Jobs and Gates, in terms of philanthropy. Gates has been very public about the plans for his wealth since at least the mid 90s, famously saying that his kids would only inherit a few million. He's regularly committed very large amounts of his capital and time to his philanthropic organization since it was started in 95. I admired him ba…
Gates did. He was no Larry Ellison, but he was a raw competitor. He wanted Microsoft to win. And his vision of what a computer could be was limited to “whatever the best thing Microsoft could come up with is.” Jobs didn’t care what Apple the company was capable of, he was driven by an external vision of what the world needed and he shaped Apple to match that.
Gates killed a lot of good companies out of sheer competitive ferocity, and we suffered because of it. Computers are less good today because Netscape and Word Perfect and Samba were mercilessly fucked with. And we’ll never know how many products were delayed by decades because of the chilling effect Gates deliberately created. I think in a real sense he owes us for that.
Jobs did what he thought was best for computer users. We can debate whether he knew what was best, but I think his approach comes with less karmic debt.
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3 billion combined? Because that's what the parent comment was implying. Your point hardly seems like a fair comparison.
The bottom 3 billion probably has zero net worth: no property, no assets. So my point was a fair comparison.
So, unless you're implying that everyone who has "a checking account" has more than 7.3 trillion dollars, sorry, it's just not the same.
I'm not denying that there is extreme inequality between poor in America and poor in Africa or India.
But let's not make false comparisons between having a banking account and being in the top 30 wealthiest individuals. Having a banking account is not the same as having 7 trillion dollars in wealth.
[1] https://publications.credit-suisse.com/tasks/render/file/?fi... (year 2013, page 21)
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It would not remain worth $150 billion if he did. It would crash quite spectacularly.
You realise that right now he has personally the money to give each and every one of his employees $256 000 in cash or stock options. Thats more than many of his employees make in 5 years. Most of these people don't own their own house. Many of them have probably never travelled outside of the country. That's not his entire company, thats just his own personal wealth. Imagine if his c-suite and upper management all p…
His shares are market-priced. He is "worth" $150Bn because of today's share price, but there is no single pool of money available to buy him out. So in practice, he is worth a billion here, a billion there, so long as he doesn't scare the fishes.
If he transferred his shares to his employees, the price would crash and each employee's slice of the pie would not be worth $256,000 any more.
The same goes for creating a massive new supply of RSUs or share options. These dilute existing shareholders who, unsurprisingly, resent that other people get for free or at a discount what they paid for at market price. Accounting rules require these to be considered as expenses, meaning the reported profit or loss looks worse.
What would work better for Amazon's lowest-paid workers would be a higher wage. It's a more predictable and effective source of wealth sharing than showering lottery tickets from a helicopter.
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It's not that easy. Television and radio licenses are a legally-fixed supply. Someone who buys the broadcasting side of Fox would be able to start dragging its content hither and yon. Whether that would prompt somebody to try a takeover of a different network is anyone's guess.
Fox News is a cable channel.. Murdoch is selling off Fox entertainment. And only a few of the Fox broadcast affiliates are owned by Fox. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Fox_television_affilia... https://www.bbc.com/news/business-42329731 Hell you could start an Internet TV channel and still be successful.
That said, the Murdochs are not selling Fox Network, which is usually what folks are thinking of in this context. They're selling the movies, TV series etc in exchange for a juicy slice of Disney.
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Small local police departments are also staffed by the 90%, though. I find it difficult to imagine an uprising against the 1% in America any time soon, but if it did happen I can absolutely imagine the police siding against the 1%.
You might want to look up the history of for example the Republic Steel Strike in Chicago in the 1930s.
https://s3.amazonaws.com/wfmt-studs-terkel/published/22485.m...
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You realise that right now he has personally the money to give each and every one of his employees $256 000 in cash or stock options. Thats more than many of his employees make in 5 years. Most of these people don't own their own house. Many of them have probably never travelled outside of the country. That's not his entire company, thats just his own personal wealth. Imagine if his c-suite and upper management all p…
He does not have it as money, he has shares. Rich people do not hold substantial cash or bank deposits; at their scale it is almost criminally wasteful to do so. His shares are market-priced. He is "worth" $150Bn because of today's share price, but there is no single pool of money available to buy him out. So in practice, he is worth a billion here, a billion there, so long as he doesn't scare the fishes. If he trans…