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My interpretation: - Paying this small tax would help the homeless, but Jeff/Amazon would see no direct benefit from this. - Donating money has the direct ben

by aylmao 8y ago

My interpretation: - Paying this small tax would help the homeless, but Jeff/Amazon would see no direct benefit from this. - Donating money has the direct benefit of positive PR. The last wealthiest guy in the world did it too-- so arguably not doing it is in fact not a neutral stance but negative PR. Hence it's in Jeff Bezos' interest to pay less taxes and donate the money it takes to make the headlines.

lisper 8y ago
It's also important to remember that while $100M sounds like a lot of money (and it is) it is only 0.1% of Bezos's net worth. It's the equivalent of someone whose net worth is $1M giving away $1000.00. And actually, it's not even equivalent to that because if you have $1M and you give away $1000 you can no longer afford to buy something that costs $1M. But when your net worth is $100B and you give away $100M your net worth is still $99.9B. You are still the richest man in the world by a wide margin, and there is essentially nothing you can't buy.
- notyourwork 8y ago
  Really excellent perspective on this. However, I don't think we should downplay anyone giving away that amount of money. I'd rather someone give away $100M compared to $0 even if its peanuts for them based on their personal finance. It seems odd that society feels entitled to decide what the richest person in the world should and shouldn't do with their money. I don't disagree with premise that he can hand away $5B and still not bat an eye but why is it out decision to make?
  - lisper 8y ago
    > It seems odd that society feels entitled to decide what the richest person in the world should and shouldn't do with their money. IMHO society is entitled to decide whether or not the concept of "private property" should be part of the rules of the game at all. And it is certainly entitled to decide whether or not a vast amount of wealth and power should vest in the hands of a single individual who is accountable to no one. It may be that the answer to both of those question is "yes", but that is not a straightforward consequence of the laws of physics.
    - notyourwork 8y ago
      Doesn't society determine how wealth is concentrated based on how they use their wallets? The wealth accumulated by founding Amazon is due to millions of people's purchases on the retail site. It is further enhanced by the amount of money being spent on AWS cloud services. This is how a free market works, the market dictates where wealth concentrates and disseminates. I don't disagree that in theory we shouldn't have it so lop sided but I don't see how we have a free market without the possibility of a Jeff Bezos rising to the top.
      - lisper 8y ago
        > Doesn't society determine how wealth is concentrated based on how they use their wallets? Only when consumers actually have a choice. That's why monopolies are bad. This is something many people miss about capitalism. The way it is supposed to work is that if Bob starts to make a ton of money, Alice notices this and enters the market herself so that she can capture some of the market currently being served by Bob. The resulting competition drives prices down so that eventually goods and services become available at the lowest possible price. If one person or company is getting fabulously wealthy, that means that the market has failed. Society has a lot of mechanisms for preventing this from happening. Progressive taxation. Anti-trust laws. The laws of physics do not lead inexorably to laissez-faire capitalism.
        davidivadavid 8y ago
        I think that's a very unique definition of market failure you're going by there. It seems hard to argue that Amazon hasn't driven prices down for consumers.
        lisper 8y ago
        You're making the wrong comparison. There is no question that Amazon has improved the retail experience and driven down prices. I love Amazon. I use them all the time. But what you have to compare is the world we live in and a hypothetical world where Amazon had a real competitor. In that world, prices would be even lower. And there would be other benefits as well. There might be an on-line retailer that was every bit as good as Amazon, but which exercised better oversight of their supply chain so that, say, ordering a name brand from them wasn't a total crap shoot in terms of whether you're getting the real thing or a counterfeit, or which carried items that you can't find on Amazon.
  - cazum 8y ago
    >I'd rather someone give away $100M compared to $0 even if its peanuts for them based on their personal finance. Yes, it's good that he has given away some money, and this money will do real good, it's important not to let this blur the focus on the real issue: There are desperate, homeless people in this country. There are people who are refusing necessary medical treatment because they cannot "afford" healthcare. There are people who will go into crippling debt for attending higher education. Most people I know say they will never be able to afford a home because the price of rent doesn't leave any room for savings. All of these problems can be remedied by a society deciding collectively not to allow single people to accumulate exorbitant amounts of wealth, and instead, collectively spread that money among the population who need it, democratically. There is no social benefit in padding out a Mossack-Fonseca tax-free account of dubious offshore legality so one man can attain massive political and social power. There is value, however, in using those resources to employ people in the project of tackling real, fixable social problems that other countries have figured out already. Green energy, healthcare for all, free education, job guarantees, infrastructure upgrades. It's all within the fiscal budget so long as there aren't single people, or small groups of shareholders becoming unnecessarily rich just because we've stacked an economic system in their favor. The idea that these are "his savings" just because he amassed them under our current system is missing the perspective that this system is not immutable. It can, and has, been changed before, and can change again. It is in the process of changing in other parts of the world right now, and with good results at that.
    - notyourwork 8y ago
      Where do you propose drawing the line on too much versus just enough fortune? Is $1M enough but $1B isn't? There will always be one person that is the most wealthy person in the world unless you want to go the opposite route and turn the free market into a socialist society. I don't disagree with the problems of the world and healthcare and basic human needs are hard to come by for a large group of people. That problem need not be conflated with the disagreement that there is a single person who has more wealth than anyone else. How was the system stacked in Jeff's favor exactly? He started a company and grew it to become what it is today. I really don't understand how the system is stacked in his or any one persons favor. I agree the rich get more wealthy and the poor less but that problem isn't systemic of Jeff Bezos' personal wealth accumulation.
  - drieddust 8y ago
    It's not his money. It's Average Joe betting on Amazon stock. These gimmicks will attract more such fools.
  - aylmao 8y ago
    > I'd rather someone give away $100M compared to $0 even if its peanuts for them based on their personal finance. I guess that's part of the point of the thread's original comment. I'd rather he give money too, but he's actively avoiding giving money he should be giving on other fronts which would've been used for positive means also. Hence, is he really doing it to see people be helped, or for the PR that comes when you're the one "voluntarily" doing the helping. > It seems odd that society feels entitled to decide what the richest person in the world should and shouldn't do with their money. I don't disagree with premise that he can hand away $5B and still not bat an eye but why is it out decision to make? Jack Ma put it in some interesting terms when he mentioned that if you have a million dollars, it's your money. When you have a billion dollars, that's not your money, that's the trust society put on you [1]. And that's the thing, this money means huge amounts of power, so what he does with it really matters to everyone. [1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dqmZsUbYIfA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dqmZsUbYIfA

by aylmao 8y ago

lisper 8y ago

It's also important to remember that while $100M sounds like a lot of money (and it is) it is only 0.1% of Bezos's net worth. It's the equivalent of someone whose net worth is $1M giving away $1000.00. And actually, it's not even equivalent to that because if you have $1M and you give away $1000 you can no longer afford to buy something that costs $1M. But when your net worth is $100B and you give away $100M your net worth is still $99.9B. You are still the richest man in the world by a wide margin, and there is essentially nothing you can't buy.

notyourwork 8y ago
Really excellent perspective on this. However, I don't think we should downplay anyone giving away that amount of money. I'd rather someone give away $100M compared to $0 even if its peanuts for them based on their personal finance. It seems odd that society feels entitled to decide what the richest person in the world should and shouldn't do with their money. I don't disagree with premise that he can hand away $5B and still not bat an eye but why is it out decision to make?
- lisper 8y ago
  > It seems odd that society feels entitled to decide what the richest person in the world should and shouldn't do with their money. IMHO society is entitled to decide whether or not the concept of "private property" should be part of the rules of the game at all. And it is certainly entitled to decide whether or not a vast amount of wealth and power should vest in the hands of a single individual who is accountable to no one. It may be that the answer to both of those question is "yes", but that is not a straightforward consequence of the laws of physics.
  - notyourwork 8y ago
    Doesn't society determine how wealth is concentrated based on how they use their wallets? The wealth accumulated by founding Amazon is due to millions of people's purchases on the retail site. It is further enhanced by the amount of money being spent on AWS cloud services. This is how a free market works, the market dictates where wealth concentrates and disseminates. I don't disagree that in theory we shouldn't have it so lop sided but I don't see how we have a free market without the possibility of a Jeff Bezos rising to the top.
    - lisper 8y ago
      > Doesn't society determine how wealth is concentrated based on how they use their wallets? Only when consumers actually have a choice. That's why monopolies are bad. This is something many people miss about capitalism. The way it is supposed to work is that if Bob starts to make a ton of money, Alice notices this and enters the market herself so that she can capture some of the market currently being served by Bob. The resulting competition drives prices down so that eventually goods and services become available at the lowest possible price. If one person or company is getting fabulously wealthy, that means that the market has failed. Society has a lot of mechanisms for preventing this from happening. Progressive taxation. Anti-trust laws. The laws of physics do not lead inexorably to laissez-faire capitalism.
      - davidivadavid 8y ago
        I think that's a very unique definition of market failure you're going by there. It seems hard to argue that Amazon hasn't driven prices down for consumers.
        lisper 8y ago
        You're making the wrong comparison. There is no question that Amazon has improved the retail experience and driven down prices. I love Amazon. I use them all the time. But what you have to compare is the world we live in and a hypothetical world where Amazon had a real competitor. In that world, prices would be even lower. And there would be other benefits as well. There might be an on-line retailer that was every bit as good as Amazon, but which exercised better oversight of their supply chain so that, say, ordering a name brand from them wasn't a total crap shoot in terms of whether you're getting the real thing or a counterfeit, or which carried items that you can't find on Amazon.
- cazum 8y ago
  >I'd rather someone give away $100M compared to $0 even if its peanuts for them based on their personal finance. Yes, it's good that he has given away some money, and this money will do real good, it's important not to let this blur the focus on the real issue: There are desperate, homeless people in this country. There are people who are refusing necessary medical treatment because they cannot "afford" healthcare. There are people who will go into crippling debt for attending higher education. Most people I know say they will never be able to afford a home because the price of rent doesn't leave any room for savings. All of these problems can be remedied by a society deciding collectively not to allow single people to accumulate exorbitant amounts of wealth, and instead, collectively spread that money among the population who need it, democratically. There is no social benefit in padding out a Mossack-Fonseca tax-free account of dubious offshore legality so one man can attain massive political and social power. There is value, however, in using those resources to employ people in the project of tackling real, fixable social problems that other countries have figured out already. Green energy, healthcare for all, free education, job guarantees, infrastructure upgrades. It's all within the fiscal budget so long as there aren't single people, or small groups of shareholders becoming unnecessarily rich just because we've stacked an economic system in their favor. The idea that these are "his savings" just because he amassed them under our current system is missing the perspective that this system is not immutable. It can, and has, been changed before, and can change again. It is in the process of changing in other parts of the world right now, and with good results at that.
  - notyourwork 8y ago
    Where do you propose drawing the line on too much versus just enough fortune? Is $1M enough but $1B isn't? There will always be one person that is the most wealthy person in the world unless you want to go the opposite route and turn the free market into a socialist society. I don't disagree with the problems of the world and healthcare and basic human needs are hard to come by for a large group of people. That problem need not be conflated with the disagreement that there is a single person who has more wealth than anyone else. How was the system stacked in Jeff's favor exactly? He started a company and grew it to become what it is today. I really don't understand how the system is stacked in his or any one persons favor. I agree the rich get more wealthy and the poor less but that problem isn't systemic of Jeff Bezos' personal wealth accumulation.
- drieddust 8y ago
  It's not his money. It's Average Joe betting on Amazon stock. These gimmicks will attract more such fools.
- aylmao 8y ago
  > I'd rather someone give away $100M compared to $0 even if its peanuts for them based on their personal finance. I guess that's part of the point of the thread's original comment. I'd rather he give money too, but he's actively avoiding giving money he should be giving on other fronts which would've been used for positive means also. Hence, is he really doing it to see people be helped, or for the PR that comes when you're the one "voluntarily" doing the helping. > It seems odd that society feels entitled to decide what the richest person in the world should and shouldn't do with their money. I don't disagree with premise that he can hand away $5B and still not bat an eye but why is it out decision to make? Jack Ma put it in some interesting terms when he mentioned that if you have a million dollars, it's your money. When you have a billion dollars, that's not your money, that's the trust society put on you [1]. And that's the thing, this money means huge amounts of power, so what he does with it really matters to everyone. [1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dqmZsUbYIfA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dqmZsUbYIfA