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.

Comments

Nobody should have that much money.

[Anonymous Coward]

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?

Re:Nobody should have that much money.

[dogvomit]

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.

--
Happy happy oh my friend

Re:Nobody should have that much money.

[kilfarsnar]

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.

[upl8n87447]

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 expense of everyone else. Or in other words, it leads to a massive transfer of wealth from the many to the few; as we see with Bezos (just one person at Amazon).

Anti-trust law or tax law that penalizes these companies for having an unfair advantage is the only way we can keep this situation under control. There should be downward pressure at the top and upward pressure at the bottom in order to maintain a healthy economy.

Re:Nobody should have that much money.

[butzwonker]

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.

Re:Raise Your Hand

[alvinrod]

Nobody has billions in their checking account. 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. The only people who have tens of millions of dollars immediately at their disposal are drug lords or foolish lottery winners.

Billionnaires

[pr0t0]

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/...

Diversification

[albeit unknown]

Bill's wealth is far more diversified than Bezos' . Only a small percentage is now in Microsoft stock, while almost all of Jeff's is in Amazon. The potential volatility of Amazon's stock price makes Bill's wealth much more valuable in real-world terms than Jeff's.

World's KNOWN Richest Person

[schwit1]

What is the financial wealth of Vladimir Putin or the owners of Saudi Aramco?

Please tell us more

[NotQuiteReal]

"Nobody should have that much money." - Wow, what else do you know? Please tell us more about how the world should be.

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.

Re:Please tell us more

[DigiShaman]

The problem is lack of velocity of the wealth. It's being consolidated to the top 1% in what amounts to a Ponzi scheme. I want to see more of that wealth moved from Wall Street and into Main Street.

I'm not asking for a handout. I'm asking for an opportunity to leverage that wealth into productivity. And yes, that means working for it.