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.

Comments

Re:Too much?

[lgw]

The disease of Obscene Greed has proven to be limitless

According to the required federal reporting on CEo compensation, Bezos was paid $80k in 2017 (previously he had been making the Amazon salary cap of $176k). He refused the boards offer of additional stock. I'm pretty sure that's not what limitless greed looks like.

His wealth is all from stock he got when Amazon went public, that he's still holding on to. Seems reasonable to me that someone who starts a company in his garage and eventually takes it public gets some chunk of stock when that happens. Is he somehow evil because the company was quite successful in the years that followed?

CEOs avoid pay in cash to skip out on taxes

[rsilvergun]

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.

Re: Too much?

[Anonymous Coward]

Did he personally provide all those goods and services? Or was it some underpaid staff that did the actual work while he scooped the monetary cream off the top simply because he "owns" the company? Capitalism = parasitism.