Jeff Bezo's Net Worth Grew By 24 Billion In 3 Months How's Your Paycheck Holding Up?

[Rod1]

I didn't mean to imply that it should be maintained.

But the destruction of those markets have been going on for so long and there is no relief in sight.

Just more tax cuts for the beneficiaries.

I don't think taxing them more is the only solution. Amazon and other major DC oriented companies should just pay more. They're making ridiculous money.

They should pay more in taxes, said taxes can go into relief programs for those affected.

Its as simple as it gets.

 

[JonesBones]

 

[Gunny]

We have to make the things he sells.. Or all of our money will disappear out of the economy and go to a few lucky people. Was Jeff smart for selling books online, and then allowing the infrastructure that created to expand? Yeah. Was it some major contribution to the world and genius invention? No. We can't let the money flow to the top without making any stops to keep the people that actually buy things, healthy. It even hurts most other rich people.

Good point here.

 

[JonesBones]

oh man, there is a new book out I saw on CNBC yesterday about how these rich guys giving away all this money is lulling society into sleep and making them accept such wealth disparity. Putting a pretty face on it. Forgot the name.

this is it

 

[Gandhi]

I didn't mean to imply that it should be maintained.

But the destruction of those markets have been going on for so long and there is no relief in sight.

Just more tax cuts for the beneficiaries.

I don't think taxing them more is the only solution. Amazon and other major DC oriented companies should just pay more. They're making ridiculous money.

I would not want to force a more successful company to pay more for the exact same labor as a less successful one. At the end the less they pay, the less I pay. All that money has to trickle into an individuals hands at some point, so I still think the wealth maximizing solution for society is to let the market work it out and redistribute on the back end. Not saying I am opposed to MW increases, it’s just not the optimal solution IMO.

 

[Rational Poster]

I would not want to force a more successful company to pay more for the exact same labor as a less successful one. At the end the less they pay, the less I pay. All that money has to trickle into an individuals hands at some point, so I still think the wealth maximizing solution for society is to let the market work it out and redistribute on the back end. Not saying I am opposed to MW increases, it’s just not the optimal solution IMO.

Sorry it's not fair for one man to have $200B in wealth while he pays his workers less than $15/hr.

Workers need to demand their share. If they won't unionize themselves the Federal government must advocate for them. The disparity in wealth is out of control.

 

[Not A Theist]

Sorry it's not fair for one man to have $200B in wealth while he pays his workers less than $15/hr.

Workers need to demand their share. If they won't unionize themselves the Federal government must advocate for them. The disparity in wealth is out of control.

Serious and honestly well meaning question - by what mechanism does the worker decide their fair share? This has troubled me for a while and I'm not seeing a solution that isn't fraught with peril.

I understand if the answer is "I don't know, but I know they don't have it" but it strikes me that defining the mechanism by which we determine a "fair share" should be one of the great questions of our time. I always like to hear how people determine that.

 

[Rational Poster]

Serious and honestly well meaning question - by what mechanism does the worker decide their fair share? This has troubled me for a while and I'm not seeing a solution that isn't fraught with peril.

I understand if the answer is "I don't know, but I know they don't have it" but it strikes me that defining the mechanism by which we determine a "fair share" should be one of the great questions of our time. I always like to hear how people determine that.

A livable wage based on region, adjusted for inflation and the cost of living annually.

 

[Not A Theist]

A livable wage based on region, adjusted for inflation and the cost of living annually.

Ok. So, not a universal minimum wage, with someone living in Hicktown, Ohio having a lower standard wage than someone living in downtown New York? Does this include healthcare? If someone still ends up destitute because of their unnecessary habits, do they lose their right to their fair share? Can the government police spending to ensure quality of life?

 

[Rational Poster]

Ok. So, not a universal minimum wage, with someone living in Hicktown, Ohio having a lower standard wage than someone living in downtown New York? Does this include healthcare? If someone still ends up destitute because of their unnecessary habits, do they lose their right to their fair share? Can the government police spending to ensure quality of life?

Health care should already be provided by the government, not the employer. So ideally it's not really an issue. But in the current state it would have to include some employer provided health care... but it's not like it's free currently. Your employer just negotiates a better deal with insurers than you would on your own.

The Federal government still has the standard social safety nets for people who fall through the cracks.

The increased wages need to come from the corporations that are experiencing record quarter after record quarter not the government.

Enough corporate subsidies.

 

[vengeful]

His business benefits society as a whole, evidenced by the fact that people are voluntarily using his product. Why would they use Amazon if it didn’t benefit them? What he does with the money that he earns is his business.

That's debatable, and people often don't know what is good for them.

Amazon has put a lot of retailers out of business and left a lot of people unemployed because of that. Amazon has received billions in tax breaks to be able to grow into the company they are today--and they're still not paying federal taxes. The cloud computing business is so successful in large part because Amazon isn't even paying for the electricity that it consumes, instead all of that is being paid for by normal consumers without them even knowing where their money is going to thanks to deals with politicians.

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/amazon-isn-t-paying-electric-090012924.html

 

[ineverpost]

He is trying to control the food supply and has even moved on pharmaceuticals. He must be paying a ton of money to the right people. It's also why I think HQ2 is going to be in DC.

 

[ineverpost]

Health care should already be provided by the government, not the employer. So ideally it's not really an issue. But in the current state it would have to include some employer provided health care... but it's not like it's free currently. Your employer just negotiates a better deal with insurers than you would on your own.

The Federal government still has the standard social safety nets for people who fall through the cracks.

The increased wages need to come from the corporations that are experiencing record quarter after record quarter not the government.

Enough corporate subsidies.

Why can't everything come from the government? I hear they have a magic printing press that they use to pay for everything .

 

[Jack V Savage]

Serious and honestly well meaning question - by what mechanism does the worker decide their fair share? This has troubled me for a while and I'm not seeing a solution that isn't fraught with peril.

I understand if the answer is "I don't know, but I know they don't have it" but it strikes me that defining the mechanism by which we determine a "fair share" should be one of the great questions of our time. I always like to hear how people determine that.

It's a good point. There's no way to determine it, really. Something to look at:

There's no law saying that workers collectively are entitled to their historical average share of the economy, but A) the change is clearly a result of changes to the system rather than workers being shittier/landlords and other capital owners being better and B) most of us probably think that the change is undesirable.

I'd also say that the evidence suggests that workers are overpaid. If they're just getting compensated for their value, a factory closing or workers otherwise losing their job should be no problem. But clearly, it's a huge problem. Doesn't mean that they're overpaid *relative* to owners, though. What's happening is that the country as a whole is adding wealth (physical and idea-based), which interacts with labor to produce more value, but an increasingly large percentage of that added value is going to capital owners (and a surprisingly large portion of that is simple landowners). That's why I think we should have an SWF, a national land-value tax, higher inheritances taxes, and higher taxes on capital gains.

 

[JonesBones]

Anyway, I think Bezos is probably the best CEO going now. He has degrees in computers and engineering. And possibly finance. Not sure. He worked on Wall Street though and is a true student of the market. I learn something when I hear him talk.

He has a very broad and powerful set of skills. I remember watching him talk and thinking, "I would hire this guy. He gets it." lol. I mean if I actually had a business and employees, he has what I am looking for.

 

[TheBlondBomber]

That's debatable, and people often don't know what is good for them.

Amazon has put a lot of retailers out of business and left a lot of people unemployed because of that. Amazon has received billions in tax breaks to be able to grow into the company they are today--and they're still not paying federal taxes. The cloud computing business is so successful in large part because Amazon isn't even paying for the electricity that it consumes, instead all of that is being paid for by normal consumers without them even knowing where their money is going to thanks to deals with politicians.

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/amazon-isn-t-paying-electric-090012924.html

So how did Amazon get big enough to put these other businesses out of business? Did they cheat the system or did they come up with a good business model that the public loves? Did those businesses that Amazon put out business also have the opportunity to create a business model to compete with Amazon, but didn’t?

But yes, sit on your high horse and tell the public that they don’t know what’s good for them and it’s up to you to tell them.

 

[Jack V Savage]

He has a very broad and powerful set of skills. I remember watching him talk and thinking, "I would hire this guy. He gets it." lol. I mean if I actually had a business and employees, he has what I am looking for.

I think the same thing when I watch Mike Trout play. I think, "if I were putting together a local baseball team for a weekend league, I would totally let this guy be on it. You can just see that he knows how to play baseball, which would be a key requirement for someone who wanted to be on my team."

 

[Not A Theist]

It's a good point. There's no way to determine it, really. Something to look at:

There's no law saying that workers collectively are entitled to their historical average share of the economy, but A) the change is clearly a result of changes to the system rather than workers being shittier/landlords and other capital owners being better and B) most of us probably think that the change is undesirable.

I'd also say that the evidence suggests that workers are overpaid. If they're just getting compensated for their value, a factory closing or workers otherwise losing their job should be no problem. But clearly, it's a huge problem. Doesn't mean that they're overpaid *relative* to owners, though. What's happening is that the country as a whole is adding wealth (physical and idea-based), which interacts with labor to produce more value, but an increasingly large percentage of that added value is going to capital owners (and a surprisingly large portion of that is simple landowners). That's why I think we should have an SWF, a national land-value tax, higher inheritances taxes, and higher taxes on capital gains.

Thoughtful and informative answer.

I like the idea of things like inheritance taxes and land-value taxes since one of the greatest rhetorical barriers to redistributing wealth is "But you can't tell me how to spend MY money which I earned!" and the general mentality that has formed around that idea - and, fair enough to that point. Two big areas to effect a redistribution of wealth would then be to take from wealth that people didn't earn through their labour and, to a lesser degree, risk (inheritance and increases in property values, though the second one gets stick as it is an investment) and through things where the holding of the thing is obviously directly a result of government enforcement (land ownership). It's tough to make a case that you're earning money in some personally active way through land ownership, and you wouldn't be able to hold land in any effective way without government enforcement short of having your own private security force, so the government is obviously instrumental in your land ownership - so it is unreasonable that the government leverage money based on increasing property values? Inheritance, obviously, isn't money you earned, so the government taking a chunk of that seems a reasonable sell.

The problem with "fair share" is that it's a negotiation, and the people who resent having their money taken have a fair point - if they earned it, they should keep as much of it as possible. That should increase incentive to take money from areas where it wasn't earned, where the earning is more passive and less effort/activity driven, and areas where earnings are most obviously only possible because of obviously direct government enforcement, giving the government a credible claim to a piece of that pie. I'm less in favour of payroll taxes than these types of things because so much of this issue is the perception of fairness - and that is harder to negotiate when the primary mechanism of fairness for one party is to take what they other party feels they fairly earned.

It really is a give and take on the notion of fairness - what is a fair portion for everyone to have versus what is a fair portion to forcefully take to achieve that fairness of distribution. The two sides having limited respect for different types of fairness while pursuing the one they favour is the argumentative hurdle we're fighting in such areas.

 

[Lord Coke]

I don't mind the fact he is rich. I do have a problem with the fact our society has allowed a capitalist nobility to form. After a billion dollars heck a 100 million there should be a massive inheritance tax. Its one thing to leave your kids enough money so they will be comfortable for the rest of their lives. Its another thing to leave them so much that they are allowed to control the country through no merit of their own.

 

[MikeMcMann]

So what advances has Bezos made again? I like Bezos but this point is simply stupid. You just made him into a healer. He has taken far more than he has given.

Go educate yourself on the advancements in tangential technologies that came from NASA and other such big new technology pushes and then go back to the OP and my reply to it that such giant technology pushes almost always create tangential technology spinout into other realms such as medical, etc.