Jeff Bezos Surpasses Bill Gates as World's Richest Person (bloomberg.com) 155
An anonymous reader shares a report: A surge in Amazon shares Thursday morning in advance of the online retailer's earnings report has propelled founder Jeff Bezos past Bill Gates as the world's richest person. Shares of the online retailer rose 1.3 percent to $1,065.92 at 10:10 a.m. in New York, giving Bezos a net worth of $90.9 billion, versus $90.7 billion for Gates. If that holds through the 4 p.m. close, Bezos, 53, will leapfrog Gates, the Microsoft co-founder, on the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. Gates, 61, has held the top spot since May 2013.
Raise Your Hand (Score:1)
If you believe that Bezos really has $billions in his checking account.
Re:Raise Your Hand (Score:5, Interesting)
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Billionaires most certainly do (or can) hold billions in cash -- in the form of treasury bills, not checking accounts. The reason is the limit of $250,000 on FDIC insurance, which is useless for someone who needs to hold billions in cash. Treasury securities are considered equally riskless (or better) in terms of getting your money back, but without the limit. Treasury bills are cash for the big dogs, including pension funds, mutual funds, banks, foreign governments, and other institutional investors. They
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Anyone who has substantial amounts of wealth (and a clue what to do with it) has almost all of it invested or tied up in land or other valuable assets.
In the case of Bezos and Gates, essentially all of it is in AMZN and MSFT stock, respectively. Which is why their net worth is tied to the share prices. Were they to try to cash out, their massive stock sales (and the lack of confidence indicated by their decision to cash out), would cause the stock price to drop. So their actual available cash is less than their net worth. OTOH, they can easily borrow billions with their stock as collateral.
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$1.5 billion of stock isn't a "massive stock sale"?
https://www.geekwire.com/2015/... [geekwire.com]
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Sources:
https://www.csmonitor.com/Business/2012/0717/Zuckerberg-s-1-percent-mortgage-Why-does-a-billionaire-need-a-loan [csmonitor.com]
https://www.quora.com/Is-it-true-that-rich-people-can-borrow-money-at-very-low-rates-of-interest-nearly-free-Regular-savers-must-borrow-at-much-higher-rates-of-interest [quora.com]
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False. But I see from your posting history that you are a person of low IQ. Did you eat paint chips as a child? Do you continue to do so today?
Not only is he right, and you wrong, but you're a dickhead. Sorry bud.
Billions in a checking account (Score:2)
It's called a money market account backed by dividend paying securities and investments.
And only poor people keep their cash in a checking account.
Sheesh.
Real wealthy people (Trump isn't one) invest their money.
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I believe he simply forgot the /S
The sarcasm was pretty much dripping from that post. You'd have to be pretty thick to miss it.
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Make no mistake. Legions of Butt Hurt SJWs will read that headline and think Bezos is hogging all the money in America, leaving nothing for them.
And they will be the one's to raise their hands.
Plus, anyone with two brain cells to rub together know that my post was sarcasm.
So, my dear asshole, you won't be registering anywhere with the name Rocket Scientist any time soon.
Nobody should have that much money. (Score:5, Interesting)
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We have anti-trust and anti-monopoly laws. Why not laws that break up the estate of people that accumulate more than say 1000x the median net worth?
Because Capitalism is America's religion and the dollar its God.
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You could make the next Amazon if you weren't too busy worrying about stopping other people from trying because of your butthurt.
Isn't this true for you as well? Clearly, you could make the next Amazon, but for some reason you prefer to quarrel with people on slashdot.
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Let's say that I live in a society where there's a lottery. In the lottery you can either win and become "king for a week" or die. Many people join the lottery, most die, but some become "king for a week". Some would say that the guy who won "king for a week" deserves to do whatever he wants, because he took a risk. Others would say that this entire lottery system is stupid and causes deaths, either through losing or through a king's misdeeds. In my eyes, this system is what unrestrained capitalism is. I do
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If you create a better Amazon, Jeff Bezos 90 billion will make its way to you.
That's not even close to true. History is littered with the bodies of better ideas that failed anyway. Ever hear of Tucker Automobiles?
There may be finite money, but it never stays in one place forever. The only thing that lets it stagnate is the same type of thinking that assholes like you who think because the fat kid HAS 10 pieces of cake that regardless of how he got them, he should be forced to give 9 of them away. What if he had 10 birthday parties to go to that day and got a piece of cake at each one? And what if he's taking them home to his 9 siblings who weren't invited? Would you force him to give up the 9 pieces then? You're butthurt that you didn't make Amazon and also you're clearly a moron.
No one is butthurt, so calm your tits. I know it makes it easier for you to dismiss people by saying they are just jealous, but it doesn't make it true. Concentrated wealth is a threat to the republic and social stability. Again, I don't have a problem with some people being rich, but it is a matter of degree. I don't envy Bezos' or Gates' wealth. I make plenty of mon
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Concentrated wealth is a threat to the republic and social stability.
That is a very PC way of saying: "Give us money or some mob will steal it and murder you if you resist." If you are going to be a thug, at least be honest about it.
Again, I don't have a problem with some people being rich, but it is a matter of degree.
So you do have a problem with people being rich if they are "too rich". And you are the one who defines "too rich", but there is no objective standard you can name. Just be honest: You have a problem with people being rich.
Wealth of that magnitude is a drain on society and the economy.
Nonsense. Societies that don't let people become rich don't create as much wealth. The poorest people in the US have fa
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Concentrated wealth is a threat to the republic and social stability.
IF that wealth is taken from others by force, I would agree. In the case of Bezos and Gates, they actually BUILT that wealth, creating new companies where people voluntarily put their money (via purchasing products and buying shares). I don't think that threatens a republic at all, rather it is the result of a well functioning republic - success based more upon merit than heritage or political position (isn't it curious how our elected politicians enter office worth $1 million, and all retire worth tens
Re:Nobody should have that much money. (Score:4, Interesting)
Opportunity is God here. Take it or leave it, that's up to you. Some people try and fail, some people try and succeed, that is opportunity. You could make the next Amazon if you weren't too busy worrying about stopping other people from trying because of your butthurt.
Ah, so some people have God and some do not? Does everyone have an equal opportunity? I think not. Can everyone have 90 billion dollars if they just work hard enough and succeed? Or does the system require that we have a few winners and many losers? Further, what if Jeff Bezos had 90 trillion dollars and everyone else had one dollar? I guess he would have just earned it, right?
Look, I don't have a problem with some people having more than others. But it's a matter of degree and proportion. I don't see how Jeff Bezos or Bill Gates could have added so much value that they are due 90 billion dollars. And I'm typing this on a Windows PC on a keyboard I bought from Amazon. As my absurd hypothetical above illustrates, it is a matter of degree. Nobody, by themselves, can add 90 billion dollars worth of value. They may have had a great idea and the drive to see it through, and they deserve to be rewarded for that. But really, when one accumulates $90 billion they are taking more than they deserve.
Re:Nobody should have that much money. (Score:5, Insightful)
There is no strong indication that becoming that rich is based on substantially more than (mostly) coincidence, based on being at the right place at the right time knowing the right people and other stochastic variables. That's why I don't trust any of those "My secret to financial success" books, they merely illustrate survivor bias mixed with a few truisms. Many rich people like to pretend that they 'made it' by their own intellect and skills, and I don't blame them because it would be kind of embarrassing to have all this money without any real achievement except for being an outlier of some probability distribution. I also don't want to say that none of them have any skills, some intelligence or smartness is certainly required to keep being wealthy and not being ripped off by others like e.g. lawyers (some rock stars lacked this intelligence, for instance), but I do think there is a tendency to overrate one's own contribution to financial success.
As for the claim that nobody should have that much money, it's true that from a utilitarian point of view according to standard economic theory transferring money from the very rich to the poor always increases overall utility in a society, because money has diminishing marginal value. So yes, according to standard economic theory it makes sense to limit the personal accumulation of wealth.
That being said, I can't blame anyone for keeping all his money, although Bill Gates is the perfect example that there is no reason to do so. He's not only willing to give away much of his unnecessary wealth, he even looks at the maximum 'bang for the bucks' when doing so, so kudos to him! Hopefully Jeff Bezos does the same.
My 2 cents.
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My siblings and I are close to an order of magnitude more well off than our parents, based on a bit of hard work, and a bit of luck. They have associate degrees and dad is a one-man-shop, and mom worked 20 hrs a week once we were all in school. They managed to get 8 college degrees in 3 kids on well below the median household income. I'd have to do some math to figure out how close to the poverty line we were back in the day, but my guess would be probably in the 200% range.
Hard work on our parts a
Outliers (Score:2)
I forget the reference, but it was basically a study of Billionaires and how they came into their money. The results basically fell into 3 groups. The first, which by far was the most common, was they just inherited it (something like 70-80%). The second was they inherited millions and were very successful with it (something like 15-20%). The third was those that went from nothing to become billionaires, which were basically a statistical outlier.
So indeed "equal opportunity" has little to nothing to do wit
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So yes, according to standard economic theory it makes sense to limit the personal accumulation of wealth.
- that is absolute lunacy.
Not really, it follows directly from classical microeconomics, as the diminishing value of money is empirically well-confirmed, under the assumption of utilitarianism. I'd challenge the utilitarian assumption if I were you and wanted to make a cogent argument.
In case of a wealthy person working actually means using his money and connections and all of his capabilities to produce more, so by limiting the amount of money he can earn you are limiting the usefulness of what he does.
It may be less useful than he thinks - others can do the very same thing, but they will get more utility from the same amount of discretionary income or an even lower one. Moreover, while there are certainly some unusually talented exceptions like e.g.
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False. It has a direct effect, in that the same amount of money provides greater utility to the poor than to the rich; but it also has an indirect effect, that it reduces the incentive for people to work in order to become rich.
So higher salaries for lower paid jobs automatically cause less incentive to work? I don't think so...
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from a utilitarian point of view according to standard economic theory transferring money from the very rich to the poor always increases overall utility in a society
False. It has a direct effect, in that the same amount of money provides greater utility to the poor than to the rich; but it also has an indirect effect, that it reduces the incentive for people to work in order to become rich. Less work gets done, less stuff gets produced, and less utility is provided.
Good point. I'm generally wary of any scheme of simply taking money from the rich and giving it to the poor. For starters, people sometimes compare the total wealth of rich people to annual income levels of regular folk. So if you just take all the money and spread it around at once, what do you do next year when there are no rich people left?
In practice, there would probably be a simple solution: people will spend their extra money on products made by somebody, so some people would be rich again, and th
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We have anti-trust and anti-monopoly laws. Why not laws that break up the estate of people that accumulate more than say 1000x the median net worth?
Interesting idea.. So, lets apply that everywhere.. Maybe sports franchises? So, if your team is consistently winning because they're hitting a winning formula and they surpass the median wins per venue, then they should have X amount of their titles, winnings, trophies, awards, etc. divvied up to lesser teams.
How about individual athletes that train hard and are just good at their game? Same deal, sorry guys/gals, you were simply too good in your area, so we're stripping you of some of it and giving it to
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That's not even the fucking same thing.
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"So, if your team is consistently winning because they're hitting a winning formula and they surpass the median wins per venue, then they should have X amount of their titles, winnings, trophies, awards, etc. divvied up to lesser teams."
The marketplace has adapted. Most major sports have a marketplace rule that penalizes success in the name of balancing the market. For example, the NFL sequences its draft so weaker teams have the opportunity to select earlier in the hopes of getting better players. Do they
Re:Nobody should have that much money. (Score:4, Informative)
You (and many other sibling posters) are fighting a straw man. The OP didn't suggest taking the wealth away from Bezos. Not at all; let him enjoy the crap out of it. The proposal was to take more wealth from estates. That means the guy who earned it is dead. And man, he just cannot enjoy a dime of it after he's dead. It is the absolutely ultimate in fair tax, since it has absolutely zero impact on the person whose money it used to be.
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Happy happy oh my friend
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The proposal was to take more wealth from estates. That means the guy who earned it is dead.
It might mean the guy who earned it is dead, but it that isn't the exclusive meaning, or even the principal meaning, of the word 'estate'. Consider consulting a dictionary before accusing people of strawman arguments based upon your opinion of word meanings.
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When talking about taxation, it really is the principal use, at least in my experience. I doubt the AC will clarify it, though. Re-reading his post, it sure looks like he or she was talking about something like expansion of estate taxes.
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Happy happy oh my friend
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When talking about taxation, it really is the principal use, at least in my experience. I doubt the AC will clarify it, though. Re-reading his post, it sure looks like he or she was talking about something like expansion of estate taxes.
The OP said, "Why not laws that break up the estate of people that accumulate more than say 1000x the median net worth?" An expansion of estate taxes? Sounds more like a proposal for expansion of the Sherman Antitrust Act into the private sector to me.
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Amazon effectively has a monopoly on online retail sales. They've become a behemoth that has tied up the industry. If the point of strong / successful business is that it leads to a better overall society, then once a company approaches or achieves monopoly, it has the opposite effect. Less competition and less ability for competitors to compete leads to higher prices, lower pay for the workers, a much larger share of revenue going towards profits; which pads the pockets of people like Bezos at the expen
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Interesting idea.. So, lets apply that everywhere
Why would you apply it everywhere?
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Interesting idea.. So, lets apply that everywhere
Why would you apply it everywhere?
To show the ridiculousness of the post's title "Nobody should have that much money" --- Because that's all the same idea.. Sorry, you made too much of X based on other people w/o regard to anything other than the count of money.. So, we're going to take it from you and give it to others that don't have as much.
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Interesting idea.. So, lets apply that everywhere
Why would you apply it everywhere?
To show the ridiculousness of the post's title "Nobody should have that much money" --- Because that's all the same idea.. Sorry, you made too much of X based on other people w/o regard to anything other than the count of money.. So, we're going to take it from you and give it to others that don't have as much.
Oh, okay, so not any real-world reason then.
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But, but, but..(with tears in eyes)...nobody should be that rich....Wahh.....
It's like all of the teachers in my town who complain that the area superintendent makes too much money. They should reduce his salary and split it among the teachers. I pointed out that if that actually happened they would only make an additional $75/year or less depending on their tax situation. Then I pointed out that as teachers they should have been able to do the simple math before opening their mouths.
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Yeah, because brutally punishing success always works out to society's benefit in the end.
If there's anything our tax code has taught us, it is that the people with means will find ways of still being people of means. You start passing laws that limit people arbitrarily, and you'll find the people that applies to will no longer be above that arbitrary limit - instead transferring that wealth to holding entities, relatives, trust funds, etc.
Also, on-paper wealth versus liquid currency. Just as Amazon's sto
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So what's your solution to an entrenched aristocracy? Because that's where we're headed. Wealthier people have better connections, their children have more opportunities, they have better access to health care, better education, better food, safer transportation, etc. Ensuring their kids will have an even easier time increasing the family wealth, not through hard work, but simply for being born out of the right womb.
Please tell us more (Score:5, Insightful)
Also explain how "the median net worth" will not be in a downward spiral under your system of arbitrary confiscation of such net worth.
Tell us how you will allocate the funds better than the person who created this "excessive" wealth.
Let's take a billion dollars and see what works out best; A) Individual billionaire decides to fund a well thought out charity or create more business ventures. Or B) A bureaucratic budget committee figures out what to do with the money.
I'm guessing "A" will work out better for the majority.
Remember, billionaires get that way by creating wealth, not taking it from someone.
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Tell us how you will allocate the funds better than the person who created this "excessive" wealth.
Certainly the subject line was poorly chosen, but this part of your post suggests you didn't read the post you replied to. The anonymous coward did not suggest allocating funds better than the person who created the wealth. The suggestion was to break up the estate. Estates in this context are what is left after the person who accumulated it has died. It would be absurd to argue that a dead person knows better how to allocate the wealth he left behind than our civil government. Dead people are dead. B
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Republicans have not really cared about fairness since the Dixiecrats jumped ship and joined the Democrats. Then they found Jesus and read Naomi Klein's book, The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism and learned how to better manipulate the US public by capitalizing on every crisis that came along.
A rising tide once lifted all boats. Now the only ones afloat are those that are bringing in cheap crap from the cheapest sweat shops that can be found the world. All the others have been sunk by the
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Comment removed (Score:4)
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Tuvalu ($34m), Kiribati ($167m), Marshall Islands ($183m), Palau ($293m), Federated States of Micronesia ($322m), Sao Tome and Principe ($350m), Tonga ($403m), Dominica ($520m), Comoros ($620m), Vanuatu ($773m), St. Vincent and the Grenadines ($775m), Samoa ($786m), St. Kitts and Nevis ($903m), The Gambia ($965m), Grenada ($1,027m), Guinea-Bissau ($1,155m), Solomon Islands ($1,184m), St. Lucia ($1,385m), Antigua an
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"You have more money than me! You shouldn't be allowed to have more money than me!" is pretty much the only argument I ever hear from people who are salty that someone has a lot of money. It's friggin juvenile.
You should listen more closely, because there are a number of reasons why vast wealth is bad for everyone but the wealthy person.
If Amazon ever sees a profit, he'll be even richer (Score:2)
[sings] Someday, somewhere, somehow!
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Meh (Score:1)
Wealth consists not in having great possessions, but in having few wants. -Epictetus
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You're an annoying, irritating, ankle-biting pest most of the time.
I don't like my critics either.
But every once in a while you come up with something insightful, or even important to say. This was one of those comments.
You're welcome!
Couldn't happen to a more underserving individual (Score:1)
Why did it take till he had 80 billion in the bank and 2017 before he went to Twitter of all places to ask for ideas of philanthropy? He deserves his wealth as much as Steve Jobs did.
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Why did it take till he had 80 billion in the bank and 2017 before he went to Twitter of all places to ask for ideas of philanthropy? He deserves his wealth as much as Steve Jobs did.
Agreed
Billionnaires (Score:5, Informative)
I can't help but wonder what it's like to have that kind of wealth. Money in general, and maybe the concept of value must nearly be meaningless for most expenditures, at least until the amounts reach some ridiculous level like 10's or 100's of millions. Maybe all that's left is not about how much you have as much as it is how much you kept from someone else getting...just for bragging rights.
$90+ Billion at only 53 is pretty astonishing. Then I thought, "Wait, what's Mark Zuckerberg's age and net worth?" Zuck is 33 and worth about $69 Billion. Then I wondered how today's billionaires compare to the dynastic US families of old.
John Rockefeller had an estimated net worth of $336 in 2010 dollars
Andrew Carnegie - $310 Billion
Henry Ford - $190 Billion
Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
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Don't forget Marcus Licinius Crassus, whose estimated wealth in current money was something like $190 billion. So rich at the time he was able to use his own money to raise an army to fight Spartacus during the Servile Rebellion. Gates, Bezos, etc, are *rich*, but when they're able to personally fund the Afghanistan war they'd be Crassus rich.
One thing I've never seen is a measure of past era people's wealth as a ratio of their wealth to the economies of their era. I suspect that many of them would have
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Spears and tanks, no. But a chariot cost about as much as tank, in terms of fraction of total labor (ie. not just labor to produce from raw materials, but labor to produce those raw materials and the labor to feed all those other laborers).
It turns out the monetary value of killing an enemy soldier is pretty much constant across time periods. So the amount you're willing to spend to do it is also pretty much constant.
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Not that I'll ever get anywhere near that rich, but if I ever got even 0.01% that much money, I'd be retired and running a philanthropic organization. I just don't understand how you keep accumulating money at that point without feeling like the greedy asshole you are. You're and your family are set for life. Now let another 1000+ families get set for life instead of hogging it all.
Honestly, how do you accumulate more than say $5 million without intense guilt for how much excess you have, and how m
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> John Rockefeller had an estimated net worth of $336 in 2010 dollars
I thought he had at least four hundred dollars.
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He's probably not even the 10th richest.
The Rothschilds are left off of all these lists intentionally.
Maybe not intentionally, or not by the publishers of such lists. There's at least two problems with calculating the net worth of a family like the Rothschilds:
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Diversification (Score:4, Insightful)
Bill Gates ws richest before 2013 as well. (Score:2)
Interested Wikipedia article that tracks the richest over time.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Interestingly, Bill Gates was the richest from 2000 to 2007, when is fortune kept going down every year. Carlos Slim and Warren Buffet over taking him sometime and then in 2013 Gates is back on top.
Kudos (Score:2)
World's KNOWN Richest Person (Score:4, Informative)
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Russ from Silicon Valley (Score:2)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
For some reason that clip makes me think of what runs through Bezos and Gates mind.
I'm moving up too (Score:1)
I get paid Friday, and expect to capture the 5,758,235,578th spot when I do. Look out Bezos, I'm on your heels!
Congratulations (Score:2)
Congratulations to Jeff Bezos, and to all of the people who have been gainfully employed by Amazon - in American and around the world. Congratulations to the shipping companies and their employees as well, who have benefited from the extra business that Amazon has spawned.
I hope that he will be benevolent and generous with his wealth, and I hope that Amazon will continue to succeed in providing jobs and services to people around the world.
Donations wanted! (Score:2)
Clearly, we need to send Bill Gates some money. Can you afford a few dollars?
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For less than the cost of a cup of coffee per day...
Second-Richest Person (Score:2)
No children that I know of (Score:2)
Well, if I ever got a mod point, then I'd be inclined to give you at least an "informative" for that. However, I'm not certain it's Putin, though the high-end estimates for Putin's wealth do go as high as $200 billion. Other estimates put him as low as $20 billion. Dark money is YUGE, even compared to Tor. Sometimes I wonder if Putin is really a puppet and front-man working for someone who is even better at hiding.
I'm actually most interested in seeing #PresidentTweety's laundry receipts for Putin's dirty r
Hard to comprehend (Score:3)
It is hard to comprehend how much money they have. To put it into perspective, figure out what just he decimal part of their wealth is. .9 Billion and .7 Billion is how much? What is the .2 Billion dollar difference in their wealth?
"$90.9 billion, versus $90.7 billion"
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The Federal Poverty Level [obamacare.net] of a single person is ~$11,800/yr. At that rate, that poor bastard would need to work at the same wage for 16,949.15 YEARS to just earn the difference between Jeff and Bills net worth ($200Mil). Hell, at $100K a year for a working professional, that's 2,000 years.
Further perspective, Land owners [forbes.com] like Ted Turner made $1.7Billion (in the 1980's) and owns 590,823 acres - just shy of 3 Rhode Islands. Not sure how much Ted spent on his land, but imagine a ranch 45 times that siz
The difference between Gates and Bezos (Score:1)
Gates has donated huge parts of his fortune to charity.
Billy and Bezos (Score:2)
Pyramid scheme (Score:1)
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If I remember correctly, Gates has been automatically selling off 20? million shares of Microsoft every quarter and been giving it to his foundation. He's been giving away billions of his money for years. He would be the wealthiest if he wasn't giving so much away.
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And he (rightly) doesn't want to be the richest guy in the graveyard.
Looks like it's going according to plan.