41 ms·

Bezos donates $100M each to CNN contributor Van Jones and chef Jose Andres

241 points by flowerlad 5y ago

inetsee 5y ago
If I had $200 million lying around, I'd be more inclined to give $1 million each to 200 people.
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- seaman1921 5y ago
  I would give 200$ each to 1M people.
- systemvoltage 5y ago
  Giving people money is absolutely the last thing anyone should do. I'd much prefer if Bezos spent $200M in building an education institute or an apprentice shop for tradesmen or to humanitarian aid or doctors without borders or open source courseware or human genome project...
  - bigthymer 5y ago
    > Giving people money is absolutely the last thing anyone should do. Why? Cash transfers to poor people is starting to look like an effective way to alleviate poverty. Despite the old stereotype of poor people blowing it all on booze and drugs, in reality, most people put it to good use. This is also another reason why UBI has started gaining more support.
    - AnIdiotOnTheNet 5y ago
      > Cash transfers to poor people is starting to look like an effective way to alleviate poverty. Much like alleviating homelessness by giving people homes, it's so simple and obvious that no one can tolerate it.
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    - systemvoltage 5y ago
      I vehemently disagree. Handing out cash to the poor isn’t fixing the problem. It will make matters worse (inflation). It’s almost unbelievable that investing in education and apprenticeship is considered a negative thing but giving straight up cash from Billionaires is popular. Homelessness and poverty needs to be tackled by getting these people jobs.
      - X6S1x6Okd1st 5y ago
        > I vehemently disagree. Handing out cash to the poor isn’t fixing the problem. It will make matters worse (inflation). Huh? Bezos giving away money likely isn't going to lead to inflation. The money supply is held constant here.
        systemvoltage 5y ago
        I was referring about the concept of giving people cash (UBI) in general and replying to the comment above mine.
        X6S1x6Okd1st 5y ago
        You can have ubi without inflation. See Alaska permanent fund
      - presentation 5y ago
        Hopefully a few hundred peer reviewed papers might change your mind. https://www.givedirectly.org/research-on-cash-transfers/ https://www.givedirectly.org/research-on-cash-transfers/
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- jimbokun 5y ago
  Well since Bezos net worth is around 200 billion, throwing 100 million at someone is in the same ballpark.
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catillac 5y ago
There will be a lot of cynicism on this post from the HN crowd, but these are unbelievably good recipients. I have interacted with Jose Andres many times, and go to his DC restaurants when I visit, and he is truly a wonderful soul who spends all his effort helping others. I don’t know much about Van Jones beyond what I see on TV, but if he’s of the same character as Jose Andres, that is stellar and they will both do wonderful things for our world with that money.
- cs702 5y ago
  I've interacted with José Andrés in the past too, and can attest that he's an amazing human being. He is the kind of person who will try his hardest to use every single one of those dollars to help other people who are desperately in need of that help. It's really great to see Bezos doing this.
- consumer451 5y ago
  Another reason to temporarily suspend cynicism is that this is a very interesting method of philanthropy. Allowing the recipients to chose their own destinations for the money could lead to a more diverse and disruptive set of expenditures. I am interested to see this award program's effects in 10-20 years. Is this an annual event? I never saw a definitive answer on that.
  - skeeter2020 5y ago
    >> I am interested to see this award program's effects in 10-20 years One of the challenges of this "pay it forward on steroids" approach is that it will likely be hard to attribute measurable changes to the original investments. It does seem notable that Bezos has captured a huge set of resources, then paid it out to others for redistribution under their policies and procedures; he's essentially acting like a government which raises some concerns.
    - RIMR 5y ago
      He has more capital than entire nation states. It's absurd that we celebrate this kind of undemocratic power in America.
balozi 5y ago
Bezos isn't known for being dumb with his money. So, I am curious about his motivation in this case. What is the deep reptilian part of his tycoon brain telling him? Is he buying positive press after yesterday's show? Does he care about the cause? Or is he buying a 1990 Cutlass Supreme from Jones on the down-low?
- tills13 5y ago
  It's a tax write-off.
  - avalys 5y ago
    What do you imagine that means exactly?
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    - woah 5y ago
      Kramer: It's a write off for them. Jerry: How is it a write off? Kramer: They just write it off. Jerry: Write it off of what? Kramer: They just write it off! Jerry: You don't even know what a write off is, do you? Kramer: No. Do you? Jerry: No I don't!! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XEL65gywwHQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XEL65gywwHQ
      - throwawayboise 5y ago
        Ah so tempted to post the punch line which is the best part of the bit. But I won't be the spoiler.
  - kstrauser 5y ago
    I'll explain why that comment almost never makes sense. Let's say your tax rate is 50% and your taxable income is $1,000,000, so you'll owe $500,000 in taxes. If you donate $100,000 to charity as a "tax write-off", now your taxable income is only $900,000 and you'll only owe $450,000 in taxes, but you lost $100,000 to save that $50,000. At the end of the day, you'll have $50,000 less than if you didn't donate anything. Before anyone starts with "but what if it drops you into a lower tax bracket!": a) that's not how marginal taxes work, and b) the top tax bracket starts at $518,400 in the US in 2021, and I'm pretty sure Bezos made many times that amount. "It's a tax write-off" doesn't make sense mathematically. It's not a thing. There's not a plausible way where giving away money can improve your bottom line over not giving it away without having tax rates above 100%, which we don't have.
Y-Bopinator 5y ago
Assassinate Bezos
shawnk 5y ago
It’s the billionaire race not only did he reach outer space as he said he would, I know he wanted to be the first BILLY to do it. Branson bear him to it.. so he says ok.. I wasn’t the first to do it but I’ll be the first to dig into my bag and give away some life changing money. Which will spread the news of Blue origin even further.
Zelphyr 5y ago
All the critics lobbing cynicism against Bezos, Branson, and Musk saying, in essence, that their money is better spent here at home reminds me of a wonderful scene from The West Wing when one character asks why we have to go to Mars: "'Cause it's next. For we came out of the cave, and we looked over the hill, and we saw fire. And we crossed the ocean, and we pioneered the West, and we took to the sky. The history of man is hung on the timeline of exploration, and this is what's next." I personally don't care that these billionaires are spending their money on vacations to orbit. It's how we get to the moon and Mars and how we survive as a species. It's what's next.
- UncleMeat 5y ago
  An alternative viewpoint: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=goh2x_G0ct4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=goh2x_G0ct4 I'm not convinced that exploration is such a self-justifying good that we should look past the very real and very urgent problems that are aggravated precisely by the people "leading the way" here.
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- acituan 5y ago
  > It's how we get to the moon and Mars and how we survive as a species. It's what's next. The core fallacy is to assume whatever made Earth less than ideal will not follow us to the new destination. To assume our survivability as species only depends on the locale, not what we will eventually turn that locale into. This happened with every new frontier. The romanticism of "it will be better in the new place" is baked into our genes probably because of the explore/exploit mechanism; it is natural for any animal to want to wander off when resource/danger ratio in a place isn't ideal. What we omit is that the most important layer of our habitat is the anthroposphere; us and our artifacts. We will drag the best resources and worst dangers with us anywhere we go. > that their money is better spent here at home reminds me... What that money represents is an agreement on commanding other humans' goods and services. As such, how much can that be "theirs" if we are taking a plant scale perspective? Don't get me wrong, I am not trying to inject a purely collectivist perspective here; money works great at certain scales, but for entire-humanity-scale issues it is a rather useless construct to think with. To me a more accurate perspective is "smart but ultimately single person, thus bounded in their rationality, somewhat exploits the imperfections of our value representation/abstraction layer to redirect tons of goods and services of humanity into what is ultimately a useless vanity gesture that will generate no insight into humanity's perennial problems".
hn_throwaway_99 5y ago
The really interesting thing to me about this announcement is that it's the first time I think I've ever heard about such a large gift being given to individuals, instead of a foundation or non-profit. Curious if Bezos is just testing to see if this type of philanthropy has better results. I'm also interested in the logistics of a gift this large. I mean, Bezos would have to pay a large gift tax for gifts sent directly to individuals. Obviously he can afford it, but curious if there was some attempt to save on taxes if the end desire is for all of this money to go to charity.
- LukeBMM 5y ago
  I'd suggest that Jeff Bezos is unlikely to pay a meaningful amount in taxes (in this case, meaning "relative to the action" rather than "relative to his overall wealth"), regardless of what he does.
  - throwawayboise 5y ago
    I mean, there's either a legal tax shelter he will take advantage of, or he'll pay the gift tax. People complain about the wealthy and giant corporations "paying no tax" but they are paying the minimal taxes that the law reqires, as we all do (any readers who voluntarily send extra money to the IRS are excepted).
    - kennywinker 5y ago
      Weirdly, a system where large sums of money are required to hold political power seems to result in low tax burdens for the ultra-rich. I can’t quite figure out how the two are linked tho… /s
      - gameman144 5y ago
        The responsibility for the totally-warped tax law falls entirely on our elected officials. I expect people to try to bend rules to their advantage, and I expect rule-makers to not concede. I don't blame soccer players for taking a dive when it helps improve the odds of pulling a card; I blame FIFA for not putting in rules to disincentivize this behavior (though in soccer in particular, this is changing).
mrtweetyhack 5y ago
More like a bribe/payoff
dataminer 5y ago
Great donations, we need more bridges among different groups of people, and we should all work to make hunger a problem of the past, around 800 million people sleep hungry every day. https://www.who.int/news/item/15-07-2019-world-hunger-is-still-not-going-down-after-three-years-and-obesity-is-still-growing-un-report https://www.who.int/news/item/15-07-2019-world-hunger-is-sti...
- tills13 5y ago
  The issue imo is that it shouldn't require philanthropy from a billionaire to fund these programs, it should be built into the support system provided by a functioning and compassionate society.
  - alfalfasprout 5y ago
    Problem is a lot of people aren't compassionate. And many of those that are-- when they finally make a fair bit of money-- instantly cease to be so. So this is nothing more than a delusional pipe dream.
joshuahaglund 5y ago
I just think this money shoulda been paid in taxes so we could collectively solve problems instead of some guy hand picking a couple lottery winners.
- jimbokun 5y ago
  Given current level of disfunction in the US government, I'll take Bezos just picking who he thinks can do the most good with the money.
  - danem 5y ago
    Well this is what has left me most confused by this decision. Are Van Jones and an incredibly successful celebrity chef really the best he could come up with? If I were Bezos I'd at least give the money to a person or organization that would help improve my PR. edit: And by this I meant things like paying for poor kids college tuition etc. I guarantee no one in the media will be talking about this story, and where Van Jones puts the money, beyond this press conference.
    - jl2718 5y ago
      I think he just hired CNN for that.
      - X6S1x6Okd1st 5y ago
        CNN != the anchors
        jl2718 5y ago
        Yep. Skips the middle man. Kind of like buying art instead of paying for lobbyists.
    - strider3g 5y ago
      think of it as a portfolio, he can give 100m to 1000 people. So 998 people left.
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flowerlad 5y ago
So this money is for the recipients for to use as they please, including for personal use? Or are they required to donate to causes they care about?
- Zelphyr 5y ago
  My understanding is that they can spend it however they wish, no strings attached.
kypro 5y ago
Kind of genius… My understanding as a Brit is that CNN are known to be supportive of progressive economic policies. I suspect they’re also critical of the existence of billionaires like Bezos in a society where many struggle to feed their families. Bribing influential CNN contributors who hold progressive or far-left economic policies is probably one of the better ways to help shift the media narrative towards one that benefits Bezos.
- gameswithgo 5y ago
  orrr, maybe bezos is also very progressive?
  - ishjoh 5y ago
    Then he doesn't walk the walk. He has ample opportunity to write a check to the government and rally for tax schemes that directly and only effect billionaires.
    - thrav 5y ago
      That’s a pretty narrow definition of “progressive”
- weakfish 5y ago
  CNN is hardly "far left" - they were highly unfavorable towards Sanders in primaries.
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- themolecularman 5y ago
  It's not a bribe. Van Jones will likely quit his job as a CNN commentator. Why would he stay? It's a strange donation tbh. Also CNN is a very partisan news source and Van Jones isn't a "middle of the aisle" type. I personally find the Jose donation fine but am kind of put off by this donation to a CNN "journalist".
pcrh 5y ago
It's seriously distracting that the headline describes these recipients as "CNN contributors"....
- jgmmo 5y ago
  why? that was first thing I thought when Bezos said he was giving Van Jones the prize... 'what... a CNN commentator? that's like giving Sean Hannity free money...'
zapnuk 5y ago
If billionaires entrust their money to more or less random people for philanthropic objectives I rather have them be taxed higher and let a (somewhat inefficient) government decide how to invest the money. At least I had a role in electing the government and can change my vote based on their performance.
- kolbe 5y ago
  There's a lot of things I would rather other people do for my benefit and their detriment as well. Thank you for your contribution.
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- bilbo0s 5y ago
  Give it to the government instead? That's insane. Live a few years here in Wisconsin, and then talk to me about how we should give the thieves in the government more money. Foxconn much? Better to choose a few good people and give it to them. Best part about the Bezos method is that all of us can also make a boatload of money and give it to people we trust to distribute it. Under your proposition, all of us have to give it to people in government who we already know we should have zero trust for.
  - misiti3780 5y ago
    Im Not sure why you are being downvoted.
  - goatse-4-this 5y ago
    .
- micropresident 5y ago
  > At least I had a role in electing the government and can change my vote based on their performance. The real crux. You want control over what other people do.
amirhirsch 5y ago
As a percentage of net worth, this is like me donating $200. He can afford to give away $100M every week forever on compounding interest alone. When I'm a billionaire the space suits will be purple.
- dumbfoundded 5y ago
  Assuming a 5% yearly interest rate, compounded weekly, that's a net worth of ~$213K. My attempt at math: https://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=200+%2F+%281.05%5E%281%2F52%29+-+1%29 https://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=200+%2F+%281.05%5E%281...
motohagiography 5y ago
The recipients seem like earnest people who have done a lot of good, and the money will supercharge what they do. Personally, I think that if I had a really good plan for $100m I could probably raise it because there is a highly competitive sellers market for things that you can put that much money into and create value from it. I just don't have that plan. :) There are a zillion holes to throw money down, but something that can sustain its value and grow? Bezos' decision was probably the same as a regular investment "team, market, product" call: there's a real problem that a lot of people have, and here is a long list of people who want to solve it but nobody has a complete solution yet, and if I had to choose the top ones to get exposure to - to make a difference on this problem, these two guys are the best ones I can find to figure out what the solution is, so I'm in for $100m apiece. Same game as any angel or startup investor, he's just playing at the three-comma table. I genuinely believe the path to that table starts by challenging ourselves to think bigger, which means doubling down when it's the hardest, and testing assumptions when it's easy. It's not sufficient, but it is the necessary condition. Think of a problem that people with effectively infinite resources would invest in solving and start working on it. To them $100m is a rounding error, what they don't see are credible plans or track records for making the change they would invest in. Jones and Andres had it. The money isn't a prize, it's an investment and a bet. I wish them luck.
pphysch 5y ago
It's interesting that Bezos is coming out with these big PR initiatives after stepping down as Amazon CEO. As the world's richest individual and face of Amazon, he endured a lot of (perhaps justified) smear campaigns, but didn't really fight back in a major way, like target the (more wealthy) Waltons or something. The MBS phone hacking scandal got a terse, professional Medium article. It's also interesting to note that the horrendous stories of Frito Lay factory worker conditions are coming out now, despite being a widespread and longstanding issue. Previously, the media narrative around poor work conditions was all "Amazon, Amazon, Amazon", with little indication that it's a systemic issue with--let's be honest--far worse cases in America. Now Bezos is going full throttle. To what end? Why not operate from the shadows on a megayacht? If it is all ego, why not do this populism drive earlier to mitigate some of the damage?
roody15 5y ago
What an overtly political move by Bezos. He could have donated to libraries, schools, medical research … nope donates to defacto narrative control.
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- X6S1x6Okd1st 5y ago
  Those damn chefs.
- ModernMech 5y ago
  The guy already bought the Washington Post? What do you expect?
WalterBright 5y ago
It'll be very interesting to see what Jones and Andres do with the money.
mucholove 5y ago
Dudes and dudettes. Before you ask for higher taxes—hear me out. First, recognize the trajectory. Bezos is the definition of someone living out the American dream. The corporate interest may be trending towards a monopoly—but this is a guy who was abandoned by his biological father, adopted by an immigrant, and was able to use his skills, smarts and efforts to achieve the easiest way for me to buy something. Second—for all the taxes paid directly and indirectly in the US, the CDC and the FDA could not respond to this pandemic with any sort of competence. Do I trust these people with money? No. They could have spent 800 million dollars and avoided a pandemic—but once it started up again they just find it so easy to spend money like gangbusters. This is a complicated issues. But before asking for higher taxes, ask for better constitutions. PS-for my money, your tax rate should be based on lifetime earnings. I would love to know how to switch from yearly, to lifetime.
- ramesh31 5y ago
  >and was able to use his skills, smarts and efforts to achieve the easiest way for me to buy something. And a small loan of $200,000 from his parents. Also that.
  - mucholove 5y ago
    You’re supposed to build on the shoulders of giants. His parents went all in on him. That $200,000 was a meaningful amount of money to them. They bet the farm. I personally, want to live in a society which celebrates living on the shoulders of parents. Good for his immigrant father on being able to make this amount of money after having his fortunes erased in Cuba. At some point, we cant be expecting more rags to riches stories. We need more acrobats, leaping from our shoulders.
    - jl2718 5y ago
      Funny to imagine. I did the opposite and spent the first 20 years of my career paying for my birth family, and only now am waking up to the idea of starting my own (family and career). This is a difficult shift in mindset. But ultimately you are right. His obligations to his parents were different but no less serious, maybe more so. By the way, I claim no hardship or victim status. It gave me a lot of courage to do things I would have been able to do otherwise. The problem was when things settled and they needed me less, and I no longer felt like I had to do anything crazy. Then it was like, “this is it?”.
failwhaleshark 5y ago
Every billionaire is a policy failure. Anyone with over $100M should have it confiscated and redistributed to those in greatest need and to provide for the common good. That's the moral thing to do. These jerks own the government and rig the system in their favor, against the interests of average people and climate survivability.
grouphugs 5y ago
these people don't deserve to come to the future with us, and neither does anyone praising them
robertlf 5y ago
I suspect Bezos's PR person came up with this after that stupid you all paid for this comment he made.
okareaman 5y ago
0.001 (200M/200B) of his wealth for some great PR to clean up his greedy image? Not bad for pocket change.
- buryat 5y ago
  he would've hired a top-notch PR campaign/firm if he wanted to clean up his image
  - okareaman 5y ago
    Oh, he's already done that but it's not helping. This was the cherry on top.
kennywinker 5y ago
Without scale, reporting on donations like this is nothing but PR for the ultra rich. Bezos donated $200M, his net worth: $211 billion Scale that to a normal human’s net worth - let’s take the national average: $121,411 And you see that he just gave away the equivalent of $120 dollars. Barely pocket change.
- samsin 5y ago
  I see your point, but I don't agree that it's "barely pocket change". If the average person donated $120 to a cause they believe in (which doesn't necessarily benefit themselves) then that's commendable.
  - Lionga 5y ago
    If every US person would donate this "pocket change" it would around 50 Billion in donations
    - kennywinker 5y ago
      A quick google shows that actually individuals give something more like $450 billion per year. Some of that is going to be the jeffs and marks, but i think gp is underestimating how much average people give to charity. But more importantly, if we made the jeffs of the world pay their employees and their taxes we’d have a lot less need for charity
buttholesurfer 5y ago
Van Jones is a garbage reporter.
agomez314 5y ago
Proof that people with a lot of money don't always know what to do with it
dukeofdoom 5y ago
This is the same guy that has his employees pee in bottles to make quotas. I guess he's rewarding people that helped him over the last year. I can see how CNN deserves it for being so kind to him and not criticize too much the lockdowns. Though I feel like part of that money should have gone to BLM for helping his business grow too.
corban1 5y ago
I remember Van Jones saying American people's vote for Trump was a "whitelash". And Bezos is saying he tried to be a unifier in a divisive world. We live in a strange society.
readonthegoapp 5y ago
Van Jones left activist-town a long time ago -- and he's been called out for it. But as an already-rich person, to agree to be fully, comprehensively bought....this world is crazy. ...adding, I'm available for $10M. negotiable.
- themolecularman 5y ago
  Right. I'm wondering what the hell this donation means. Van Jones isn't an activist and is a partisan commentator. This country has been divided by people like him in the news media constantly turning out better ratings by instigating and propagandizing.
JBiserkov 5y ago
>Blue Origin has received $181M in public funding since 2019, and is slated to get over $300M more by 2024. >One might think of this, then, as Bezos giving our money to people he likes in return for good PR and personal tax benefits.
ironfootnz 5y ago
In other countries this would be considered bribes
dd444fgdfg 5y ago
I'm glad billionaires like Bezos exist. They can choose to fund grand visions when people who need votes either don't, or they do and the funding gets cut after the next election. This is one of the ways China is able to execute long term strategy better than the west, they can maintain focus. We're not able to do that without a significant necessity (winning a cold war). Get over your jealousy of the billionaires. Some people are luckier than you, smarter, work harder. That's just life.
- trainsplanes 5y ago
  Imagine a world where instead of saying "hey, people in your town are dying on the streets, your water is full of lead, you can't afford medical treatment, and your children can't possibly afford college, but quit being jealous of lucky rich people! It's not fair to them", we instead said "we could take just a little bit of unfairly acquired cash from mega billionaires and make the lives of 300 million people measurably better." That lucky, smart, hard working, genetically gifted, handsome, strong, virile, well-endowed, wrinkle-free, and blessed by all the gods billionaire would still be able to go to space and give mindblowing amounts of cash to anyone they want even with 1/10th the wealth they have now. Otherwise, society is going to reach a breaking point as it always has and will again. But that's just life.
  - dd444fgdfg 5y ago
    the problems people have is not the fault of the billionaires. sometimes it's their fault. sometimes it's their families. mostly it's their communities. the existence or lack-of of billionaire going into space is going to have zero impact on homelessness, water quality, medical treatment, and your kids going to college.
gnzoidberg 5y ago
Wow. Just wow. The average comment in HN is braindead retarded. The amount of self assured Dunning-Kruger morons in this forum is ... most of it. CYA HN
- dang 5y ago
  Would you please stop posting unsubstantive and/or flamebait comments to HN? You've been doing it a lot, unfortunately, and we ban that sort of account. If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and sticking to the rules when posting here, we'd be grateful. Note these ones: "Don't be snarky." "When disagreeing, please reply to the argument instead of calling names." "Please don't sneer, including at the rest of the community." https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
cratermoon 5y ago
Wow between this and the donations Jeffy made a couple of weeks ago [1][2], he's either trying to write off as much of the money he made from the pandemic, or trying to whitewash his reputation to distract from criticism of sending himself into space. Or maybe both? 1 https://www.marssociety.org/news/2021/07/14/mars-society-selected-to-receive-1-million-from-blue-origins-club-for-the-future/ https://www.marssociety.org/news/2021/07/14/mars-society-sel... 2 https://airandspace.si.edu/newsroom/press-releases/smithsonian-receive-historic-200-million-donation-jeff-bezos https://airandspace.si.edu/newsroom/press-releases/smithsoni...
- ThisIsMineToo 5y ago
  Ill go for both. Sprinkle some money around to distract from the actual issue. Or is he thanking the Amazon workers again for making it possible for him to donate 200M ?
  - cratermoon 5y ago
    Bezos is probably hoping to convince Wally Funk to go on a motivational speaking tour of Amazon warehouses.
- sunstone 5y ago
  Perhaps he's just being tired of being embarrassed by his Ex who's been donating billions while he has senior citizens peeing in bottles in his warehouses.
sakopov 5y ago
I know that Bezos can do whatever he wants with this money, but this is bizarre. If I read news like this in Russian media I'd think it's a clever bribe. But I guess in the US it's called a "charitable donation" and everyone just shrugs their shoulders and think it's some kind of new charitable tactic. This is literally how you buy narrative from a giant media network and make it look like you're a cool dude just raining free money on people.
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rajacombinator 5y ago
That’s some expensive wokewashing.
cranesnake 5y ago
This country allows people to buy more power than our elected officials have.
georgeplusplus 5y ago
Is there some reason to believe the work of Blue Origin and Virgin Galactic will stop at tourism? Couldnt their designs progress to offering sub orbital flights across the world in record times?
imwillofficial 5y ago
Anyone curious why those two got 100mil each?
ramesh31 5y ago
So billionaires are upvoting people IRL now
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1vuio0pswjnm7 5y ago
s/donates/awards/
jl2718 5y ago
I’m not upset that he isn’t paying taxes. I’m upset that he’s paying for leverage on other people’s taxes. But Bezos did not create this system, he’s just using it to his advantage, exactly the way it was designed. At least he’s transparent about it.

241 points by flowerlad 5y ago

inetsee 5y ago

If I had $200 million lying around, I'd be more inclined to give $1 million each to 200 people.

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seaman1921 5y ago
I would give 200$ each to 1M people.
systemvoltage 5y ago
Giving people money is absolutely the last thing anyone should do. I'd much prefer if Bezos spent $200M in building an education institute or an apprentice shop for tradesmen or to humanitarian aid or doctors without borders or open source courseware or human genome project...
- bigthymer 5y ago
  > Giving people money is absolutely the last thing anyone should do. Why? Cash transfers to poor people is starting to look like an effective way to alleviate poverty. Despite the old stereotype of poor people blowing it all on booze and drugs, in reality, most people put it to good use. This is also another reason why UBI has started gaining more support.
  - AnIdiotOnTheNet 5y ago
    > Cash transfers to poor people is starting to look like an effective way to alleviate poverty. Much like alleviating homelessness by giving people homes, it's so simple and obvious that no one can tolerate it.
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
  - systemvoltage 5y ago
    I vehemently disagree. Handing out cash to the poor isn’t fixing the problem. It will make matters worse (inflation). It’s almost unbelievable that investing in education and apprenticeship is considered a negative thing but giving straight up cash from Billionaires is popular. Homelessness and poverty needs to be tackled by getting these people jobs.
    - X6S1x6Okd1st 5y ago
      > I vehemently disagree. Handing out cash to the poor isn’t fixing the problem. It will make matters worse (inflation). Huh? Bezos giving away money likely isn't going to lead to inflation. The money supply is held constant here.
      - systemvoltage 5y ago
        I was referring about the concept of giving people cash (UBI) in general and replying to the comment above mine.
        X6S1x6Okd1st 5y ago
        You can have ubi without inflation. See Alaska permanent fund
    - presentation 5y ago
      Hopefully a few hundred peer reviewed papers might change your mind. https://www.givedirectly.org/research-on-cash-transfers/ https://www.givedirectly.org/research-on-cash-transfers/
      - deleted 5y ago
        [deleted]
jimbokun 5y ago
Well since Bezos net worth is around 200 billion, throwing 100 million at someone is in the same ballpark.
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catillac 5y ago

There will be a lot of cynicism on this post from the HN crowd, but these are unbelievably good recipients. I have interacted with Jose Andres many times, and go to his DC restaurants when I visit, and he is truly a wonderful soul who spends all his effort helping others. I don’t know much about Van Jones beyond what I see on TV, but if he’s of the same character as Jose Andres, that is stellar and they will both do wonderful things for our world with that money.

cs702 5y ago
I've interacted with José Andrés in the past too, and can attest that he's an amazing human being. He is the kind of person who will try his hardest to use every single one of those dollars to help other people who are desperately in need of that help. It's really great to see Bezos doing this.
consumer451 5y ago
Another reason to temporarily suspend cynicism is that this is a very interesting method of philanthropy. Allowing the recipients to chose their own destinations for the money could lead to a more diverse and disruptive set of expenditures. I am interested to see this award program's effects in 10-20 years. Is this an annual event? I never saw a definitive answer on that.
- skeeter2020 5y ago
  >> I am interested to see this award program's effects in 10-20 years One of the challenges of this "pay it forward on steroids" approach is that it will likely be hard to attribute measurable changes to the original investments. It does seem notable that Bezos has captured a huge set of resources, then paid it out to others for redistribution under their policies and procedures; he's essentially acting like a government which raises some concerns.
  - RIMR 5y ago
    He has more capital than entire nation states. It's absurd that we celebrate this kind of undemocratic power in America.

balozi 5y ago

Bezos isn't known for being dumb with his money. So, I am curious about his motivation in this case. What is the deep reptilian part of his tycoon brain telling him? Is he buying positive press after yesterday's show? Does he care about the cause? Or is he buying a 1990 Cutlass Supreme from Jones on the down-low?

tills13 5y ago
It's a tax write-off.
- avalys 5y ago
  What do you imagine that means exactly?
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  - woah 5y ago
    Kramer: It's a write off for them. Jerry: How is it a write off? Kramer: They just write it off. Jerry: Write it off of what? Kramer: They just write it off! Jerry: You don't even know what a write off is, do you? Kramer: No. Do you? Jerry: No I don't!! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XEL65gywwHQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XEL65gywwHQ
    - throwawayboise 5y ago
      Ah so tempted to post the punch line which is the best part of the bit. But I won't be the spoiler.
- kstrauser 5y ago
  I'll explain why that comment almost never makes sense. Let's say your tax rate is 50% and your taxable income is $1,000,000, so you'll owe $500,000 in taxes. If you donate $100,000 to charity as a "tax write-off", now your taxable income is only $900,000 and you'll only owe $450,000 in taxes, but you lost $100,000 to save that $50,000. At the end of the day, you'll have $50,000 less than if you didn't donate anything. Before anyone starts with "but what if it drops you into a lower tax bracket!": a) that's not how marginal taxes work, and b) the top tax bracket starts at $518,400 in the US in 2021, and I'm pretty sure Bezos made many times that amount. "It's a tax write-off" doesn't make sense mathematically. It's not a thing. There's not a plausible way where giving away money can improve your bottom line over not giving it away without having tax rates above 100%, which we don't have.

Y-Bopinator 5y ago

Assassinate Bezos

shawnk 5y ago

It’s the billionaire race not only did he reach outer space as he said he would, I know he wanted to be the first BILLY to do it. Branson bear him to it.. so he says ok.. I wasn’t the first to do it but I’ll be the first to dig into my bag and give away some life changing money. Which will spread the news of Blue origin even further.

Zelphyr 5y ago

All the critics lobbing cynicism against Bezos, Branson, and Musk saying, in essence, that their money is better spent here at home reminds me of a wonderful scene from The West Wing when one character asks why we have to go to Mars: "'Cause it's next. For we came out of the cave, and we looked over the hill, and we saw fire. And we crossed the ocean, and we pioneered the West, and we took to the sky. The history of man is hung on the timeline of exploration, and this is what's next." I personally don't care that these billionaires are spending their money on vacations to orbit. It's how we get to the moon and Mars and how we survive as a species. It's what's next.

UncleMeat 5y ago
An alternative viewpoint: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=goh2x_G0ct4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=goh2x_G0ct4 I'm not convinced that exploration is such a self-justifying good that we should look past the very real and very urgent problems that are aggravated precisely by the people "leading the way" here.
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acituan 5y ago
> It's how we get to the moon and Mars and how we survive as a species. It's what's next. The core fallacy is to assume whatever made Earth less than ideal will not follow us to the new destination. To assume our survivability as species only depends on the locale, not what we will eventually turn that locale into. This happened with every new frontier. The romanticism of "it will be better in the new place" is baked into our genes probably because of the explore/exploit mechanism; it is natural for any animal to want to wander off when resource/danger ratio in a place isn't ideal. What we omit is that the most important layer of our habitat is the anthroposphere; us and our artifacts. We will drag the best resources and worst dangers with us anywhere we go. > that their money is better spent here at home reminds me... What that money represents is an agreement on commanding other humans' goods and services. As such, how much can that be "theirs" if we are taking a plant scale perspective? Don't get me wrong, I am not trying to inject a purely collectivist perspective here; money works great at certain scales, but for entire-humanity-scale issues it is a rather useless construct to think with. To me a more accurate perspective is "smart but ultimately single person, thus bounded in their rationality, somewhat exploits the imperfections of our value representation/abstraction layer to redirect tons of goods and services of humanity into what is ultimately a useless vanity gesture that will generate no insight into humanity's perennial problems".

hn_throwaway_99 5y ago

The really interesting thing to me about this announcement is that it's the first time I think I've ever heard about such a large gift being given to individuals, instead of a foundation or non-profit. Curious if Bezos is just testing to see if this type of philanthropy has better results. I'm also interested in the logistics of a gift this large. I mean, Bezos would have to pay a large gift tax for gifts sent directly to individuals. Obviously he can afford it, but curious if there was some attempt to save on taxes if the end desire is for all of this money to go to charity.

LukeBMM 5y ago
I'd suggest that Jeff Bezos is unlikely to pay a meaningful amount in taxes (in this case, meaning "relative to the action" rather than "relative to his overall wealth"), regardless of what he does.
- throwawayboise 5y ago
  I mean, there's either a legal tax shelter he will take advantage of, or he'll pay the gift tax. People complain about the wealthy and giant corporations "paying no tax" but they are paying the minimal taxes that the law reqires, as we all do (any readers who voluntarily send extra money to the IRS are excepted).
  - kennywinker 5y ago
    Weirdly, a system where large sums of money are required to hold political power seems to result in low tax burdens for the ultra-rich. I can’t quite figure out how the two are linked tho… /s
    - gameman144 5y ago
      The responsibility for the totally-warped tax law falls entirely on our elected officials. I expect people to try to bend rules to their advantage, and I expect rule-makers to not concede. I don't blame soccer players for taking a dive when it helps improve the odds of pulling a card; I blame FIFA for not putting in rules to disincentivize this behavior (though in soccer in particular, this is changing).

mrtweetyhack 5y ago

More like a bribe/payoff

dataminer 5y ago

Great donations, we need more bridges among different groups of people, and we should all work to make hunger a problem of the past, around 800 million people sleep hungry every day. https://www.who.int/news/item/15-07-2019-world-hunger-is-still-not-going-down-after-three-years-and-obesity-is-still-growing-un-report https://www.who.int/news/item/15-07-2019-world-hunger-is-sti...

tills13 5y ago
The issue imo is that it shouldn't require philanthropy from a billionaire to fund these programs, it should be built into the support system provided by a functioning and compassionate society.
- alfalfasprout 5y ago
  Problem is a lot of people aren't compassionate. And many of those that are-- when they finally make a fair bit of money-- instantly cease to be so. So this is nothing more than a delusional pipe dream.

joshuahaglund 5y ago

I just think this money shoulda been paid in taxes so we could collectively solve problems instead of some guy hand picking a couple lottery winners.

jimbokun 5y ago
Given current level of disfunction in the US government, I'll take Bezos just picking who he thinks can do the most good with the money.
- danem 5y ago
  Well this is what has left me most confused by this decision. Are Van Jones and an incredibly successful celebrity chef really the best he could come up with? If I were Bezos I'd at least give the money to a person or organization that would help improve my PR. edit: And by this I meant things like paying for poor kids college tuition etc. I guarantee no one in the media will be talking about this story, and where Van Jones puts the money, beyond this press conference.
  - jl2718 5y ago
    I think he just hired CNN for that.
    - X6S1x6Okd1st 5y ago
      CNN != the anchors
      - jl2718 5y ago
        Yep. Skips the middle man. Kind of like buying art instead of paying for lobbyists.
  - strider3g 5y ago
    think of it as a portfolio, he can give 100m to 1000 people. So 998 people left.

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flowerlad 5y ago

So this money is for the recipients for to use as they please, including for personal use? Or are they required to donate to causes they care about?

Zelphyr 5y ago
My understanding is that they can spend it however they wish, no strings attached.

kypro 5y ago

Kind of genius… My understanding as a Brit is that CNN are known to be supportive of progressive economic policies. I suspect they’re also critical of the existence of billionaires like Bezos in a society where many struggle to feed their families. Bribing influential CNN contributors who hold progressive or far-left economic policies is probably one of the better ways to help shift the media narrative towards one that benefits Bezos.

gameswithgo 5y ago
orrr, maybe bezos is also very progressive?
- ishjoh 5y ago
  Then he doesn't walk the walk. He has ample opportunity to write a check to the government and rally for tax schemes that directly and only effect billionaires.
  - thrav 5y ago
    That’s a pretty narrow definition of “progressive”
weakfish 5y ago
CNN is hardly "far left" - they were highly unfavorable towards Sanders in primaries.
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themolecularman 5y ago
It's not a bribe. Van Jones will likely quit his job as a CNN commentator. Why would he stay? It's a strange donation tbh. Also CNN is a very partisan news source and Van Jones isn't a "middle of the aisle" type. I personally find the Jose donation fine but am kind of put off by this donation to a CNN "journalist".

pcrh 5y ago

It's seriously distracting that the headline describes these recipients as "CNN contributors"....

jgmmo 5y ago
why? that was first thing I thought when Bezos said he was giving Van Jones the prize... 'what... a CNN commentator? that's like giving Sean Hannity free money...'

zapnuk 5y ago

If billionaires entrust their money to more or less random people for philanthropic objectives I rather have them be taxed higher and let a (somewhat inefficient) government decide how to invest the money. At least I had a role in electing the government and can change my vote based on their performance.

kolbe 5y ago
There's a lot of things I would rather other people do for my benefit and their detriment as well. Thank you for your contribution.
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bilbo0s 5y ago
Give it to the government instead? That's insane. Live a few years here in Wisconsin, and then talk to me about how we should give the thieves in the government more money. Foxconn much? Better to choose a few good people and give it to them. Best part about the Bezos method is that all of us can also make a boatload of money and give it to people we trust to distribute it. Under your proposition, all of us have to give it to people in government who we already know we should have zero trust for.
- misiti3780 5y ago
  Im Not sure why you are being downvoted.
- goatse-4-this 5y ago
  .
micropresident 5y ago
> At least I had a role in electing the government and can change my vote based on their performance. The real crux. You want control over what other people do.

amirhirsch 5y ago

As a percentage of net worth, this is like me donating $200. He can afford to give away $100M every week forever on compounding interest alone. When I'm a billionaire the space suits will be purple.

dumbfoundded 5y ago
Assuming a 5% yearly interest rate, compounded weekly, that's a net worth of ~$213K. My attempt at math: https://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=200+%2F+%281.05%5E%281%2F52%29+-+1%29 https://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=200+%2F+%281.05%5E%281...

motohagiography 5y ago

The recipients seem like earnest people who have done a lot of good, and the money will supercharge what they do. Personally, I think that if I had a really good plan for $100m I could probably raise it because there is a highly competitive sellers market for things that you can put that much money into and create value from it. I just don't have that plan. :) There are a zillion holes to throw money down, but something that can sustain its value and grow? Bezos' decision was probably the same as a regular investment "team, market, product" call: there's a real problem that a lot of people have, and here is a long list of people who want to solve it but nobody has a complete solution yet, and if I had to choose the top ones to get exposure to - to make a difference on this problem, these two guys are the best ones I can find to figure out what the solution is, so I'm in for $100m apiece. Same game as any angel or startup investor, he's just playing at the three-comma table. I genuinely believe the path to that table starts by challenging ourselves to think bigger, which means doubling down when it's the hardest, and testing assumptions when it's easy. It's not sufficient, but it is the necessary condition. Think of a problem that people with effectively infinite resources would invest in solving and start working on it. To them $100m is a rounding error, what they don't see are credible plans or track records for making the change they would invest in. Jones and Andres had it. The money isn't a prize, it's an investment and a bet. I wish them luck.

pphysch 5y ago

It's interesting that Bezos is coming out with these big PR initiatives after stepping down as Amazon CEO. As the world's richest individual and face of Amazon, he endured a lot of (perhaps justified) smear campaigns, but didn't really fight back in a major way, like target the (more wealthy) Waltons or something. The MBS phone hacking scandal got a terse, professional Medium article. It's also interesting to note that the horrendous stories of Frito Lay factory worker conditions are coming out now, despite being a widespread and longstanding issue. Previously, the media narrative around poor work conditions was all "Amazon, Amazon, Amazon", with little indication that it's a systemic issue with--let's be honest--far worse cases in America. Now Bezos is going full throttle. To what end? Why not operate from the shadows on a megayacht? If it is all ego, why not do this populism drive earlier to mitigate some of the damage?

roody15 5y ago

What an overtly political move by Bezos. He could have donated to libraries, schools, medical research … nope donates to defacto narrative control.

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X6S1x6Okd1st 5y ago
Those damn chefs.
ModernMech 5y ago
The guy already bought the Washington Post? What do you expect?

WalterBright 5y ago

It'll be very interesting to see what Jones and Andres do with the money.

mucholove 5y ago

Dudes and dudettes. Before you ask for higher taxes—hear me out. First, recognize the trajectory. Bezos is the definition of someone living out the American dream. The corporate interest may be trending towards a monopoly—but this is a guy who was abandoned by his biological father, adopted by an immigrant, and was able to use his skills, smarts and efforts to achieve the easiest way for me to buy something. Second—for all the taxes paid directly and indirectly in the US, the CDC and the FDA could not respond to this pandemic with any sort of competence. Do I trust these people with money? No. They could have spent 800 million dollars and avoided a pandemic—but once it started up again they just find it so easy to spend money like gangbusters. This is a complicated issues. But before asking for higher taxes, ask for better constitutions. PS-for my money, your tax rate should be based on lifetime earnings. I would love to know how to switch from yearly, to lifetime.

ramesh31 5y ago
>and was able to use his skills, smarts and efforts to achieve the easiest way for me to buy something. And a small loan of $200,000 from his parents. Also that.
- mucholove 5y ago
  You’re supposed to build on the shoulders of giants. His parents went all in on him. That $200,000 was a meaningful amount of money to them. They bet the farm. I personally, want to live in a society which celebrates living on the shoulders of parents. Good for his immigrant father on being able to make this amount of money after having his fortunes erased in Cuba. At some point, we cant be expecting more rags to riches stories. We need more acrobats, leaping from our shoulders.
  - jl2718 5y ago
    Funny to imagine. I did the opposite and spent the first 20 years of my career paying for my birth family, and only now am waking up to the idea of starting my own (family and career). This is a difficult shift in mindset. But ultimately you are right. His obligations to his parents were different but no less serious, maybe more so. By the way, I claim no hardship or victim status. It gave me a lot of courage to do things I would have been able to do otherwise. The problem was when things settled and they needed me less, and I no longer felt like I had to do anything crazy. Then it was like, “this is it?”.

failwhaleshark 5y ago

Every billionaire is a policy failure. Anyone with over $100M should have it confiscated and redistributed to those in greatest need and to provide for the common good. That's the moral thing to do. These jerks own the government and rig the system in their favor, against the interests of average people and climate survivability.

grouphugs 5y ago

these people don't deserve to come to the future with us, and neither does anyone praising them

robertlf 5y ago

I suspect Bezos's PR person came up with this after that stupid you all paid for this comment he made.

okareaman 5y ago

0.001 (200M/200B) of his wealth for some great PR to clean up his greedy image? Not bad for pocket change.

buryat 5y ago
he would've hired a top-notch PR campaign/firm if he wanted to clean up his image
- okareaman 5y ago
  Oh, he's already done that but it's not helping. This was the cherry on top.

kennywinker 5y ago

Without scale, reporting on donations like this is nothing but PR for the ultra rich. Bezos donated $200M, his net worth: $211 billion Scale that to a normal human’s net worth - let’s take the national average: $121,411 And you see that he just gave away the equivalent of $120 dollars. Barely pocket change.

samsin 5y ago
I see your point, but I don't agree that it's "barely pocket change". If the average person donated $120 to a cause they believe in (which doesn't necessarily benefit themselves) then that's commendable.
- Lionga 5y ago
  If every US person would donate this "pocket change" it would around 50 Billion in donations
  - kennywinker 5y ago
    A quick google shows that actually individuals give something more like $450 billion per year. Some of that is going to be the jeffs and marks, but i think gp is underestimating how much average people give to charity. But more importantly, if we made the jeffs of the world pay their employees and their taxes we’d have a lot less need for charity

buttholesurfer 5y ago

Van Jones is a garbage reporter.

agomez314 5y ago

Proof that people with a lot of money don't always know what to do with it

dukeofdoom 5y ago

This is the same guy that has his employees pee in bottles to make quotas. I guess he's rewarding people that helped him over the last year. I can see how CNN deserves it for being so kind to him and not criticize too much the lockdowns. Though I feel like part of that money should have gone to BLM for helping his business grow too.

corban1 5y ago

I remember Van Jones saying American people's vote for Trump was a "whitelash". And Bezos is saying he tried to be a unifier in a divisive world. We live in a strange society.

readonthegoapp 5y ago

Van Jones left activist-town a long time ago -- and he's been called out for it. But as an already-rich person, to agree to be fully, comprehensively bought....this world is crazy. ...adding, I'm available for $10M. negotiable.

themolecularman 5y ago
Right. I'm wondering what the hell this donation means. Van Jones isn't an activist and is a partisan commentator. This country has been divided by people like him in the news media constantly turning out better ratings by instigating and propagandizing.

JBiserkov 5y ago

>Blue Origin has received $181M in public funding since 2019, and is slated to get over $300M more by 2024. >One might think of this, then, as Bezos giving our money to people he likes in return for good PR and personal tax benefits.

ironfootnz 5y ago

In other countries this would be considered bribes

dd444fgdfg 5y ago

I'm glad billionaires like Bezos exist. They can choose to fund grand visions when people who need votes either don't, or they do and the funding gets cut after the next election. This is one of the ways China is able to execute long term strategy better than the west, they can maintain focus. We're not able to do that without a significant necessity (winning a cold war). Get over your jealousy of the billionaires. Some people are luckier than you, smarter, work harder. That's just life.

trainsplanes 5y ago
Imagine a world where instead of saying "hey, people in your town are dying on the streets, your water is full of lead, you can't afford medical treatment, and your children can't possibly afford college, but quit being jealous of lucky rich people! It's not fair to them", we instead said "we could take just a little bit of unfairly acquired cash from mega billionaires and make the lives of 300 million people measurably better." That lucky, smart, hard working, genetically gifted, handsome, strong, virile, well-endowed, wrinkle-free, and blessed by all the gods billionaire would still be able to go to space and give mindblowing amounts of cash to anyone they want even with 1/10th the wealth they have now. Otherwise, society is going to reach a breaking point as it always has and will again. But that's just life.
- dd444fgdfg 5y ago
  the problems people have is not the fault of the billionaires. sometimes it's their fault. sometimes it's their families. mostly it's their communities. the existence or lack-of of billionaire going into space is going to have zero impact on homelessness, water quality, medical treatment, and your kids going to college.

gnzoidberg 5y ago

Wow. Just wow. The average comment in HN is braindead retarded. The amount of self assured Dunning-Kruger morons in this forum is ... most of it. CYA HN

dang 5y ago
Would you please stop posting unsubstantive and/or flamebait comments to HN? You've been doing it a lot, unfortunately, and we ban that sort of account. If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and sticking to the rules when posting here, we'd be grateful. Note these ones: "Don't be snarky." "When disagreeing, please reply to the argument instead of calling names." "Please don't sneer, including at the rest of the community." https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

cratermoon 5y ago

Wow between this and the donations Jeffy made a couple of weeks ago [1][2], he's either trying to write off as much of the money he made from the pandemic, or trying to whitewash his reputation to distract from criticism of sending himself into space. Or maybe both? 1 https://www.marssociety.org/news/2021/07/14/mars-society-selected-to-receive-1-million-from-blue-origins-club-for-the-future/ https://www.marssociety.org/news/2021/07/14/mars-society-sel... 2 https://airandspace.si.edu/newsroom/press-releases/smithsonian-receive-historic-200-million-donation-jeff-bezos https://airandspace.si.edu/newsroom/press-releases/smithsoni...

ThisIsMineToo 5y ago
Ill go for both. Sprinkle some money around to distract from the actual issue. Or is he thanking the Amazon workers again for making it possible for him to donate 200M ?
- cratermoon 5y ago
  Bezos is probably hoping to convince Wally Funk to go on a motivational speaking tour of Amazon warehouses.
sunstone 5y ago
Perhaps he's just being tired of being embarrassed by his Ex who's been donating billions while he has senior citizens peeing in bottles in his warehouses.

sakopov 5y ago

I know that Bezos can do whatever he wants with this money, but this is bizarre. If I read news like this in Russian media I'd think it's a clever bribe. But I guess in the US it's called a "charitable donation" and everyone just shrugs their shoulders and think it's some kind of new charitable tactic. This is literally how you buy narrative from a giant media network and make it look like you're a cool dude just raining free money on people.

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rajacombinator 5y ago

That’s some expensive wokewashing.

cranesnake 5y ago

This country allows people to buy more power than our elected officials have.

georgeplusplus 5y ago

Is there some reason to believe the work of Blue Origin and Virgin Galactic will stop at tourism? Couldnt their designs progress to offering sub orbital flights across the world in record times?

imwillofficial 5y ago

Anyone curious why those two got 100mil each?

ramesh31 5y ago

So billionaires are upvoting people IRL now

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1vuio0pswjnm7 5y ago

s/donates/awards/

jl2718 5y ago

I’m not upset that he isn’t paying taxes. I’m upset that he’s paying for leverage on other people’s taxes. But Bezos did not create this system, he’s just using it to his advantage, exactly the way it was designed. At least he’s transparent about it.