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Jeff Bezos Becomes the Richest Man In Modern History, Topping $150 Billion (bloomberg.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Bloomberg: Jeff Bezos is the richest person in modern history. The Amazon founder's net worth broke $150 billion in New York on Monday morning, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. That's about $55 billion more than Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates, the world's second-richest person. Bezos, 54, has now topped Gates in inflation-adjusted terms. The $100 billion mark that Gates hit briefly in 1999 at the height of the dot-com boom would be worth about $149 billion in today's dollars. That makes the Amazon chief executive officer richer than anyone else on earth since at least 1982, when Forbes published its inaugural wealth ranking. Bezos crossed the threshold just as Amazon prepares to kick off its 36-hour summer sales event, Prime Day. The company's share price was $1,825.73 at 11:10 a.m. in New York, extending its 2018 gain to 56 percent and giving Bezos a $150.8 billion fortune. A little more than a week ago, Facebook co-founder Mark Zuckerberg overtook Warren Buffett to become the world's third-richest person.
When is enough money enough money? I ponder...
I'd buy everyone on Earth a beer. Well, if they were of age. And not recovering alcoholics. And didn't vote for Trump. Screw it, this is too hard.
I'd buy a bunch of Senators and institute a one night Purge just like the movie.
Cue post-outage schadenfreude.
With a few more years of stagnant employee wages and no corporate tax we can get him to $200 billion in no time.
Interesting how when he makes $150 billion, it's because he deserves it. When i make $150,000 it's because IT salaries are too high and we need more visas.
And at the same time many of his workers make so little money they require foodstamps just to afford to eat.
I thought my $50,000 I make working in IT in Silicon Valley was a lot. I can't even imagine $150,000,000,000!
I do not know too much about Jeff Bezos, but this scene from 1999, where he explains why he is driving a Honda Accord despite being a billionaire, may explain why he is not just your average billionaire, but the richest man on earth.
https://youtu.be/3VUGj34jTqY?t...
Vote me down, but somehow I think he is a great guy.
Signature deleted by lameness filter.
The main reason Bezos is rich is that the masses are both stupid and lazy.
The Prime scam is showing Amazon's true colors though.
Personally I hope to read about Bezos contracting some terminal disease that his money cannot fix.
And he still pays his warehouse workers a shit wage. He's a fucking asshole.
This means more retails shops like Sears/ToysRUs will close down, I am pretty sure this affects retail real estate all over the country. So literally hundred of thousands of people will lose their jobs and there is a cascading effect. Well we techies may not be directly affected but surely this will affect the US economy and even society more and more. I dont think the future bode well.
Billionare pays 0 taxes, employees treated like human cattle one step from being replaced by robots - becomes riches in the world. Details at 11.
GTFOML. I've never bought anything from Amazon, never will. Futile perhaps but I cannot stand behind companies like them.
All I see on here are people whining about how much Bezos is worth, yet as far as I can tell, not a single one of you has stopped using Amazon.
If you dislike something so much, don't use it. Isn't that the saying?
Don't like Bezos being so rich, don't use Amazon.
We will bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security. -- Dwight D. Eisenhower
I'd buy everyone on Earth a beer. Well, if they were of age. And not recovering alcoholics. And didn't vote for Trump. Screw it, this is too hard.
I'd buy a bunch of Senators and institute a one night Purge just like the movie.
If I had that money I'd open up 150,000 index funds with $1 million each, and then hold a lottery.
Lottery winners would be entitled to the annual profit from the index fund, up to a maximum of $50,000. Assuming the market goes up on average, this would be enough to keep the fund going in perpetuity. (Averaged over 20 years, the market is actually a good investment and the funds would accrue value faster than inflation. On average.)
This would remove 150,000 people from the US workforce, making wages go up for the rest of us.
Over 20 years, the extra value could be used to fund more lotteries.
It would also start us on the path to UBI.
We deserve some rest.
The thing is I have no problem with him being this rich. However, I do have a problem with how he is using his money to buy influence. The guy knows a lot about business and tech and almost nothing about pretty much anything else. The problem is he went and bought the Washington Post and has since turned it into one of the most biased and unjournalistic newspapers in existence. People get confused because they know the brand but since 2013, Bezos has run this paper into the ground and used it as the propaganda arm of the DNC.
Gates and Buffett have been giving away much of their fortune to charities. Thus, the raw amount may not be a fair comparison, as it "rewards" those who don't give to charities. Granted, Bezos may someday do the same in his elder years, but who knows the competition decades away? It's a silly contest anyhow, like asteroids comparing Jupiter to Saturn.
Table-ized A.I.
... would make an average person economically independent.
However, I doubt that he'd notice it at all. Maybe not even making 100 people rich.
It must be Bash Amazon Day
One can argue that stinginess (frugality) got him where he is today. Perhaps there's a Drake's Equation equivalent for mega-billionaires where the non-frugal are usually weeded out.
Warren Buffett is often known for frugality/stinginess also. When he purchased a newspaper in a two-paper town, a competitive well-publicized "paper war" gained steam*. After about a decade, the other paper folded, leaving Buffett a monopoly. The main reporters and editors thought they deserved a bonus for winning. But Buffet blew them off, paraphrased as: "The dominant paper in most two-paper towns has been gobbling up #2 systematically for decades. I spotted that pattern and it's why I bought the dominant paper. Death of #2 was inevitable, NOT because of your content."
While perhaps technically true, it's a slap to the face of the main content creators. In my opinion, such is poor for morale and could hurt profitability. They busted their butts trying to win a well-publicized market battle, finally won, and got NONE of the spoils of war; the General saying victory was "inevitable".
* The prior owners seemed happy with the status quo of 2/3 of the market; but Warren wanted it all.
Table-ized A.I.
Yeah I feel sorry for the hedge fund owned mom and pop retailers like sears and toys r us. You are kidding right
Because his money is probably mostly on the books.
worth $150 Billion and he's got employees like this...
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You are an idiot if you think it's only hedge-funded owned shops that are affected by amazon.
How much does he have?
With personal assets estimated to be around 200 billion US Dollars.
http://fortune.com/2017/07/29/...
https://www.independent.co.uk/...
I do not think that word means what you think it means. It's not a damned event. Or, if it is to be described as such, every single activity you perform can be described as an event, which means we'll need a new word for events that are actually events.
Well stated.More over he does not have 150 billon to play with. Being that he wants to maintain (rigid) control over his company, he cannot sell most of his stock without risking losing that power. Further, that valuation is all just paper.Until he liquidates his position, his valuation will go up and down and follow the stock price. If Amazon stock tanks tomorrow, he is going to be quite a bit less rich. Finally, if / when he sells, dumping that much stock will lower the price, so he is going to have to take a long time to sell off, or accept that he isn't going to get 'full value' for his options. He could probably tank the price by himself just by putting all his stock on the market all at once.
That doesn't mean that he still isn't a rich bitch, though.Given that he has a strong track record in building companies, he could probably get a couple of hundred billion loaned to him by banks with his stock as collateral.If he wanted a 'Trump style' paper empire, he could buy many, many big companies with leveraged collateral, and pay back the interest with profits.He could become the worlds first trillionaire if he stopped fucking around with Amazon, and really pursued the goal.
Of course, who cares? At a certain point, its just numbers in a computer. He'll still be dead of cancer or a bad ticker in 50 years, and he cannot drink any more beer that you or I can in a single day. I kinda feel bad for him. He cannot go anywhere without an armed security escort. He will always have a huge number of people who dislike him, for no other reason than he has stupid piles of cash. In a way, hes trapped by his own success.
HA! I just wasted some of your bandwidth with a frivolous sig!
Came here to post just that. When you get to levels like this, wealth is hard to judge. Few are as transparent as the dot com billionaires. There are likely several dictators in the world who can control more funds for personal use than Bezos can.
Putin's true wealth is mostly hidden (it's as you say an estimate). Until his net worth can actually be quantified, it's entirely speculative, where as Bezos is not. Which is why he's considered the world's richest man, because there's actual data pointing to it.
Just further evidence of how hyperexploitative the big IT corporations have become. How much do their warehouse workers get paid? How stable, safe, and secure are their working conditions? That's how Bezos makes his money: Out of his workers' misery.
Dough seed on ya.
Let's say Bezos decided he'd like to have $100 billion of cash in his bank account tomorrow - or even this year. So, he tries to sell his stock. It is unlikely that he could manage it even if he sold everything because Amazon stock would plummet. Perhaps he could get a significant fraction if he could quietly make some major deals for other stock and then convert that to cash.
Stock is entirely speculative. Much like the banks in the late 1920s and early 30s there is very little real value there. The illusion only works as long as there is no rush on the money.
I'd be willing to bet that Putin could get much more real value from his power than Bezos.
Sam Walton was worth $100 billion when he died in 1992. That would be more than $174 billion in today's dollars
https://www.investopedia.com/university/sam-walton-biography/sam-walton-net-worth.asp
At Jeff's level the scam is very simple. He's allowed to borrow money from banks at negative interest rates (well, below the rate he could just loan it back out for anyway). This is how the top 1% avoid paying taxes. They've taken control of the banking system and use it to hide the enormous amounts of wealthy they've claimed on the backs of you and me.
Jeff built his fortune on the backs of guys like this. Amazon's enormous worth is predicated on the assumption by the investors that he's going to do what he did to that guy to everybody while jacking up the prices once he runs everybody out of business. If we're going to do something about a future where we all work until we have a stroke now's the time.
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how does he afford these? Hud housing? I make $80k/yr and I'm stuck in an apartment until my kid graduates from college.
It's not just numbers in a computer. Money is _power_. He's literally got the power to reshape society and bend it to his whims. People with that kind of money use it to make other people do what they're told. And if you don't fall in line they buy off a group of thugs to make sure you do, or else.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
150 billion is not that much.
I calculated that if he lives for another 50 years and spends $100 every second then he will have run out of money.
who?
1/3 abusing workforce with low wages
1/3 abusing tax loopholes
1/3 abusing sellers with ia
According to various estimates Mr. Putin's worth is over USD 200 billion, so that makes him the richest person on Earth. Unlike Mr. Bezos however Putin has made his money by stealing it from Russians and as a result he's made the country poor, backward and uncompetitive but he couldn't care less.
Bezos 2018: 1.5 x 10^11
US GDP 2017 : 1.9 x 10^13
Ratio: 0.8% GDP
Rockefellar 1937: 1.4 x 10^9
US GDP 1937: 9.2 x 10^10
Ratio: 1.5% GDP
You are half way there Jeff.
See subject: Don't worry - the "Golden Calf" of your shekels dries up! I give folks what they want vs. your machinations, lol & THUS I always will win... & you KNOW it.
* Heck - you're PROVING IT via your EASILY NULLIFIED "Bitch Tactics 'efforts'" which I easily prove are you in seconds by posting your PUNY threats... lmao!
(You really ARE too STUPID to live... time to FIRE UP THE OVENS again & Zyklon B showers).
Ever see Dr, Strange? Keep it up, that's EXACTLY what I want "JudenMammu" - you're MY prisoner.
LASTLY Don't speak for "Everyone" JUDE - you're the HATED minority ALL THRU HISTORY only fooling YOURSELVES, lol - self deluded morons & thieves.
APK
P.S.=> Dance little Jude, dance - to MY TUNE as I see you lose all that STOLEN GOLD/SHEKELS, lol - slowly (oh, SO slowly, painfully, as your kind fell into your OWN trap of debt, lol)... apk
Let's say Bezos decided he'd like to have $100 billion of cash in his bank account tomorrow - or even this year. So, he tries to sell his stock. It is unlikely that he could manage it even if he sold everything because Amazon stock would plummet. Perhaps he could get a significant fraction if he could quietly make some major deals for other stock and then convert that to cash.
Stock is entirely speculative. Much like the banks in the late 1920s and early 30s there is very little real value there. The illusion only works as long as there is no rush on the money.
I'd be willing to bet that Putin could get much more real value from his power than Bezos.
Let's say Bezos decided he'd like to have $100 billion of cash in his bank account tomorrow - or even this year.
Yup, let's explore this scenario.
So, he tries to sell his stock.
LOL! No, it makes no sense to do that, but interesting that you thought selling stock is the only option on the table.
In such cases the stock owner would take a loan from the bank, with stock as collateral.
Basically you have no idea what are you talking about, but you still think expressing your blatantly misinformed views in a public forum is the way to go.
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It was the GP that made the point that Bezos only makes $80k a year. I submit to you that the GP is the one pushing a narrative that Bezos is a humble working man who leaves the bulk of his fortune to the people. My point is that is a false narrative meant to distract from the enormous money grab him and others like him are doing.
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He's proud of the CULTURE of his company that promotes massive abuse of power and the death of its workers through unrealistic targets. And here you are sucking his cock.
Fuck you. You're a pleb and always will be.
Cocksucking pleb.
How the fuck is he going to pay interest on a $100 billion loan without selling some stock?
Unless you intend him to pay interest on the loan using the loan itself?
Nope, I have no idea what you're talking about but you still think expressing your strange views in a public forum is the way to go.
Personal loans don't work out nearly that well because the banks do know the true value of stock.
For example, Musk has had to put nearly 14 million shares of Tesla up as collateral for less than $700 million of loans. That's in the ballpark of $50 / share and less than 20% of their alleged value. That ratio would place Bezos' borrowing potential in the sub $30 billion range.
Painfully, American families are learning the difference between median and mean
http://qz.com/260269/painfully-american-families-are-learning-the-difference-between-median-and-mean/
Casteism
Between the definition of 'modern history' and the accuracy of the measure of wealth of any person what is the point of this story?
"In the news: someone is much richer than you. and to make the story more interesting we will choose some random dates and use a guess about how much they are worth. More at eleven."
"Consensus" in science is _always_ a political construct.