38 billion reasons to say goodbye: Ex-Mrs Bezos splits from Jeff with 4% of Amazon shares in tow Amazon boss Jeff Bezos is handing his now ex-wife Mackenzie $38bn in shares as part of the final settlement. The couple's separation has been made official by a judge in King County, Washington, according to Bloomberg, which also reckoned the judgement will put MacKenzie Bezos straight in at number 22 in the publication's …
Credit to Bezos for not contesting the settlement. Yes, he has more than enough money but that hasn't stopped others in similar situation. It's also not really a case of gold-digging since Bezos has given more than sufficient grounds for divorce and I think the two were together before the money started rolling in.
Now, if only Mr Bezos could be as fair-minded when it came to paying people and taxes…
From the interviews I read the (now-ex) Mrs Bezos seems a genuine nice person, but there is also financial sense in not taking more.
Amazon stock is worth $$$$$$ based on investors belief that Bezos can turn it into a money machine in the future. If 50% of the votes now went to Mrs Bezos, and so possibly to some future boyfriend they would drop them like a very hot thing
Agreed. I don't know what has happened behind the scenes, but publicly this is a model divorce that has been dealt with in a very civil and adult manner - despite the amount of money involved.
Next to that, I have seen people go for the throat for less than €150,000. Shame on them.
Yes. It's always refreshing to me when a couple is able to separate and decide to go their own way without drama; but when there is such a fortune involved, I find it downright inspires respect.
But it is a bit funny to see him congratulating his wife on deciding to give most of her money to charity, considering he does not exactly have the image of a philanthropist.
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Its staggering to me that we have so many billionaires , when you think that , you know, a billion is a thousand millions.
not 10 , not 24 , not even 100 - a thousand!
and most of these billionaires have several billions!
I think if the human brain could possibly actually "envision" what a large number a billion is , there would be revolution.
It cant obviously, as the majority of people think they've got a chance in a 50 million to 1 lottery.
Back in the correct days a billion was a million million, then the Yanks changed it with their weak-sauce thousand million definition.
But even with the feebler American amount it is a fair sum, and most Americans do realise that if each works their hardest, obeys their superiors implicitly and believes in Democracy and the American Way, then every one, male and female, regardless of race and creed or, indeed, genders, shall end up as rich as Mr. Bezos is now.
"But even with the feebler American amount it is a fair sum, and most Americans do realise that if each works their hardest, obeys their superiors implicitly and believes in Democracy and the American Way, then every one, male and female, regardless of race and creed or, indeed, genders, shall end up as rich as Mr. Bezos is now."
That isn't funny even as dark satire.
People that have figured out how to make money do so, and those who haven't do not. As such, on average the rich get richer and the poor get poorer. It is not inherently evil, just basic economics.
In addition, those "billions" are just zeros on paper. They don't have large amounts of liquid assets, primarily because liquid assets don't appreciate in value and since they are in the business of making money they keeping lots of cash on hand goes against their nature. That money is instead invested in something, perhaps their own company, perhaps diversified into other companies, but that money is WORKING for them (even if they don't work themselves) and putting others to work, creating jobs, providing services, etc.
The guy who builds a million dollar house gets a house, but dozens of tradesman get jobs, food on their tables, and shoes on their children's feet. The two go hand in hand. You take away one you take away both.
It's tempting to assign that "figuring out how to make money" to intelligence, talent, hard work, etc. But most economists can tell you that the first ingredient is luck. A large number of things can derail your money-making enterprise, the most obvious being insufficient financing/investment to build your business. By the time you have Amazon dominating the world, there are thousands (millions) helping you to make money, lots of people (or their pension funds) funding your operation, ...
Just remember: you didn't build that alone.
Well, luck and... larceny, as well as not a small measure of lying, cheating, threats and intimidation. Of course, as Brown University's Mark Blythe is wont to say, eventually none of that may matter because, "The Hamptons is not a defensible position" (https://youtu.be/nwK0jeJ8wxg).
Well, luck and... larceny, as well as not a small measure of lying, cheating, threats and intimidation
Yes, because nobody ever got rich by working hard or being smart. Wait, what's that on the horizon? Is it a bird? Is it a plane? No, it's a fact which rather obliterates your world view.
https://www.standard.co.uk/insider/alist/the-worlds-richest-selfmade-billionaires-and-how-long-it-took-them-to-make-their-first-million-a4156456.html
There's a world of difference between the founder of a business and someone who simply works for it, at least in terms of contribution to the success or otherwise of the business.
It's tempting to assign that "figuring out how to make money" to intelligence, talent, hard work, etc.
It is tempting, but it's tempting because it's true. You need some or lots of all three of those things, or epic levels of luck. But then, there's nothing wrong with being lucky.
Just remember: you didn't build that alone.
Alone? No, but Bezos did, for example, mostly build Amazon due to his own intelligence, talent, and hard work. No matter how hard his hardest box picker worked, that simply didn't define the success of the company.
If we divided all the wealth of the world equally today, within a year you would once again have rich people, and poor people. Most rich people would be rich people again, and most poor people would be poor people again; most, not all. If people understood how money worked and the actual difference between investing & spending (I'm looking at you Gordon Brown), then they'd not be poor for long; unless they figured out both, they'd be poor again pretty fast, no matter how much they're given - we see this time and again with lottery winners.
The guy who builds a million dollar house gets a house, but dozens of tradesman get jobs, food on their tables, and shoes on their children's feet. The two go hand in hand. You take away one you take away both.
And of course they also spend time that might be spent building a number of smaller houses instead. Or doing something other than being tradesmen. I don't really begrudge the super-rich their massive yachts, but I don't believe any and all spending is equal in the benefits it brings to society at large.
that money is WORKING for them (even if they don't work themselves)
A billionaire's money plays a different role to that in my bank account, it's effectively a license to direct production. Capitalism says we should award this license to the people who prove they can accumulate more of it. That part I'm largely okay with, since the other ways of allocating resources haven't proven particularly good either. However, that the system amplifies inequality (the making money just because you have it effect) is not a good aspect. Occasionally people get caught out (see Patisserie Valerie for merely one recent example of kicking back to watch the money roll in), but often not, and even when they do lots of other people pay the price too.
And of course they also spend time that might be spent building a number of smaller houses instead. Or doing something other than being tradesmen. I don't really begrudge the super-rich their massive yachts, but I don't believe any and all spending is equal in the benefits it brings to society at large.
spot on, the "Businessman" its basically capturing energy / work and creaming off as bigger slice as he can get away with so that he dosent have to do that work himself.
People worship money as the be all and end all , but it should merely be a stamp on your card of how much you have contributed to society, not how much much you have tricked other people into stamping your card instead of their own.
after all, if everyone was rich and sitting on a yacht, obviously the system would collapse.
The ultra-super rich put most of their wealth into places where they pay little or no taxes. The billion or two they spend on yachts and houses and other things that create jobs is a drop in the bucket compared to what they don't put into their country's coffers to help with infrastructure, disaster relief, and so on. I admire Mrs. B's charitable frame of mind, but the common good shouldn't be at the mercy of personal decisions made by a few.
Thank you Mr. Reagan, for trickle down economics.
Pity it doesn't work.
The dozens of tradesmen do get paid, but the real problem is that the percentage of wealth that is cycled through the economy is very small. The same amount of money cycled through 10,000 people - does many multiples more good.
As for "figure out how to make money": money grows itself at a certain point - it is called monopoly.
to envision a billion, we need to think of seconds not $$$
so, a MILLION seconds is about 3 months
a BILLION seconds is around 30 years
and a TRILLION seconds is around 30 000 years
so to SPEND a BILLION at $1 a second would take about 30 years, and if people start to say that isn't very much, it IS OVER $85 000 a DAY every day for those thirty odd years ........................
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