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Jeff Bezos Surpasses Bill Gates as World's Richest Person (bloomberg.com)
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.
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/...
I'm sorry, but your opinion seems to be wrong.
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