Potentially ignorant question: Why doesn't Jeff Bezos just end poverty

Because that doesn't teach self-reliance and responsibility.

If he was the siort of person who did something like that, he would have already done so. Rich people stay rich by NOT doing things like that.

But yes, for those who for no fault of their own, are in some way stuck below the poverty level...he could and should help.

You don't give people cash. You teach them how to fish. He should be building hospitals and homes for the mentally ill. He should be spending money on inner cities and impoverished youths. Excellently equipped schools from pre k with highly paid teachers and tutors. Clearly these parents and kids need a lot of help.

Why would he do that? Keeping people poor is part of the game.

He gives to charities of his choice. Maybe the national poverty level isn't something he's passionate about.

[quote] He should be building hospitals and homes for the mentally ill. He should be spending money on inner cities and impoverished youths.

Why *should* he do that? It would be great if he did, but why should he feel obligated to do so?

because he's a greedy cunt, also, if there is no great want then there is little impetus to over consume, thus increasing his profits.

[quote]but why should he feel obligated to do so?

because he has more money than God.

You ask the wrong questions. why is he allowed to amass that much wealth? There should be safeguards in place to stop on person from holding that much wealth.

[quote] because he has more money than God.

So? Other than paying taxes, he's not obligated to spend his wealth in any particular way.

He's a selfish assholes? Duh, OP!

Some people care.

J.K. Rowling dropped off the Forbes billionaires list in 2012 due to a combination of factors, including the estimated $160 million she donated to charity and Britain's high tax rates.

That, and the ticket to the cosmos is not a 30-day Advance Purchase Excursion Fare.

Space travel costs more than you might imagine.

Bezos' ex-wife has been giving away a lot of money, but it's actually not that simple. There have been stories about grifters hitting her up for cash.

When you're looking at this level of wealth, distributing becomes a full-time job--i.e. see the Gates Foundation. William Buffet plans to leave most of his fortune to the Gates Foundation for that reason.

There are a lot of unintended consequences when there are big infusions of money. Bill Clinton, for example, upped the amounts of money available for student loans so more kids could go to college. Colleges took advantage of the cash infusion and hiked tuition. End result is the huge amounts of student debt and college is less affordable than it's ever been.

Bezos isn't so much evil as single-minded. He was able to see how to leverage software platforms in a way that's led to a great concentration of vwealth. He's not the only one. And if he weren't doing it, someone else would. Better taxation would help.

R13 if the ship explodes, I'll laugh

"William Buffet"

Oh, dear!

Actually, he could put in broadband in rural areas and other areas with weak service. It would benefit Amazon as well.

He’s a sociopath. They thrive best in the free market.

He needs to start a Foundation like Gates did. If just for PR sakes.

What is he going to do with all that money? Why not help the world?

Not everyone in the tech is Bill Gates, frankly Gates is an anomaly, Steve Jobs was notoriously stingy on charity donations too.

Probably for the same reason donald tRump never made a charitable contribution in his life.

One guy's cash payments to people won't accomplish much. As someone said upthread, he should improve institutions, like funding the arts and investing in medical and clean energy research.

I think he should be in charge of reparations so we can all move on.

likely if he gave everyone below the poverty line a million dollars they'd still end up back in poverty because they'd go and blow that money on stupid shit that don't need or can't afford in the long run

[quote]I think he should be in charge of reparations so we can all move on.

Excellent idea! And sense, like any non-idiot, he would be against them, we would all move on, and that would be the end of another stupid idea.

Since...sorry.

1. give a man a fish vs. teach a man to fish

2. People rarely value things given away for free

3. While not always, debt is a lifestyle choice that people should bear on their own.

4. Why should he do it? Vaccinations, hunger, or donations to disease research are great. But, "ending poverty" what does that even mean.

R12, that post LITERALLY VIOLENTLY OFFENDED ME.

Off topic: Can you ask JK for $$$ so I can get my top surgery? TIA!

The market was set up to have many losers

More and more jobs have less benefits

Many jobs are in areas where the cost of living is high because there are so many jobs

Money equals power. THIS is the real reason. We should not have billionaires. If we had kept Kennedy/Johnson tax rates we’d have had $40 trillion more for the bottom 90%. Money is power.

Less than 10% of people have over 90% of the wealth. That is not mathematically sustainable.

The Rich wrote all rules. Teach a man to fish USED to be relevant but the system is rigged.

OP, clearly you don't understand just who, or who even becomes a billionaire.

r27 just fucking shut your pie hole and go lick the corn out of Donald Trump's ass.

[quote][R27] just fucking shut your pie hole and go lick the corn out of Donald Trump's ass.

Translation: Give me FREE money. It's not fair that other people have money.

Even with his billions, Jeff Bezos could not end poverty even just in the US if he wanted to do so.

Jeff Bezos is currently worth $164 billion. There are 33 million below the poverty line in the US.

If he were to liquidate all his money today, and distribute it evenly to all 33 million below the poverty line, that would come out to $4970 per person.

That is not enough to end poverty.

It isn't fair that individual people have hundreds of billions - that's BILLIONS, not millions, a staggering amount of money - while little children, the elderly, the disabled and other vulnerable people among us don't have clean water, enough to eat or safe housing, no. You're so close to getting it.

Jeff Bezos is worth $196 billion. He piled on a few dozen extra billions last year.

R12 And unfortunately no good dead goes unpunished.

$196 billion divided equally among the 33 million US citizens living below the poverty line comes to:

$5939 per person. And that could not be repeated, it would be a one-time check.

That's [italic]still[/italic] not enough to end poverty.

r34, read r33 (& now r37).

So the first wave of drug addicts that overdosed from his generosity would completely overwhelm him with lawsuits from the families left behind. While I think he is a conniving cunt, I also know he has an ambitious plan for space travel and eventually habitation of other planets. A Hundred years from now (or even sooner) large swaths of our planet will be completely uninhabitable so maybe the money is better spent on keeping future humanity alive.

It’s not politicians but the captains of industry that make real change.

how many of y'all bitching about Bezos use Amazon?

The proposed 2022 US budget is more than 6 TRILLION dollars. It’s instructive to see that even 396 billion dollars from one person wouldn’t be a transformational gift for any of the significant challenges facing the country.

funny listening to all the little socialists apologizing for bezos who is a strong democrat/socialist... if he were a republican or conservative the pitchforks would be out in droves 😄

Capitalism

R42, the DL has a decidedly negative opinion of Bezos. But it’s nice to see that the Tucker Carlson correspondence course you’re taking is giving you that contradictory, faultily arrived at premise that is a hallmark of the new intentional ignorance.

Because he's transformed into a Bond villain

[quote] You don't give people cash. You teach them how to fish.

What if they don't like fish?

R17 that's actually a great idea. I work with people around the country and I'm always shocked when someone tells me they can't play streaming video where they live. Strong internet for all, more Amazon sales.

[quote] Why doesn't he just do something tangible with it, like pay off student debts or mortgages for a whole state or anyone who makes less than $50,000 a year or something. I'm sure he does charitable shit but I'm talking cash money in people's pockets. Has he ever been asked this?

Yes, pick some state, any state - and announce that you’re going to pay off everyone’s outstanding debt at Universities and Colleges in that state. Everyone gets a clean slate. That is something that is tangible and will have an immediate impact to many people.

[quote] [R27] just fucking shut your pie hole and go lick the corn out of Donald Trump's ass.

Oh my, that is quite the graphic visual.

I don’t think it’s an ignorant question. It’s crazy when you think that any of these billionaires could use their money to make things better for so many people, but they don’t. Instead they’re hungry for more money and more power, and it just never ends.

Of course, Bezos and his billionaire buddies don’t have to give away a penny, and they don’t owe anyone a thing. I just don’t know if I could fall asleep at night knowing that I could give away 50% of my money and change countless lives by doing so, while still being able to afford my billion dollar jet. I don’t see the difference between having 5 billion dollars or 500 billion dollars in terms of my own happiness and life satisfaction.

[quote] Yes, pick some state, any state - and announce that you’re going to pay off everyone’s outstanding debt at Universities and Colleges in that state. Everyone gets a clean slate. That is something that is tangible and will have an immediate impact to many people.

That's a one-and-done and not something sustainable indefinitely. If a billionaire is trying to make a difference, I think he or she needs to contribute in a way that sustains over time. Paying off college debt for a state would be great, but for how long would the impact of that be felt?

The guy won't even improve working conditions for his underpaid workers. I don't think he cares tbh.

"You don't give people cash. You teach them how to fish."

But what if you're too poor to buy a pole?

A financial bail-out could work miracles for a lot of people. If you don't throw down a rope, they'll probably never crawl out of the hole.

The Roman Catholic Church could start to end poverty by selling all the gold candle sticks and art in the Vatican.

[quote] A Hundred years from now (or even sooner) large swaths of our planet will be completely uninhabitable so maybe the money is better spent on keeping future humanity alive.

If we destroy this planet we deserve extinction.

[quote] If you don't throw down a rope, they'll probably never crawl out of the hole.

Haven't you figured it out yet? That's been the plan all along!

He doesn't even pay his employees a living wage and they're the ones who made him wealthy. And he didn't "learn how to fish" his parents "loaned" him a quarter million dollars. He of all people should understand how valuable this kind of leg up is

Why college debt? College grads, even with debt, are relatively better off than people without degrees.

A lot of Bezos' wealth isn't that liquid. It's basically his share of Amazon. Liquidating his shares would create a royal mess in the market, driving down market value and resulting in less money bro give away.

It's a big deal when Bezos sells off a couple of billion, which he's done a couple of times to fund his rocket ships.

R58 A lot of people seem to think billionaires have vaults of gold in their mansions like Scrooge McDuck.

Here’s a glass half full look at this issue.

Meanwhile, Evil assholes like Sean Hannity who makes $25 million a year by helping to keep culture wars a live on fox news, is buying up real estate left and right up and down the east coast and the southeast. That kind of thing is also fucking up the housing market and he'll just leave all of this real estate to his children, creating generational wealth for his most likely Republican asshole offspring.

All of these assholes need to be exposed.

And Trump fucked up a billion dollar empire his father left him. Fuck all of these Cunts!

[quote] You ask the wrong questions. why is he allowed to amass that much wealth? There should be safeguards in place to stop on person from holding that much wealth.

Why ? Because you haven't done so you don’t think it’s ok for someone else to have achieved that level of financial success? Sour grapes.

Because poverty would still continue to breed. You can always get the people out of poverty but never poverty put if the people….. Everybody is responsible for their own fortune anyway….

"There will be poor always, pathetically struggling. Look at the good things you've got..."

Student debt in this country is worth $1.57 trillion. Bezos isn't doing shit about that, even if he wanted to.

Jeff Bezos is unusually stingy even for a multibillionaire, but even when spreading his wealth around among Americans living in poverty, it would amount to $5,300 per person. Anti-poverty programs require top-to-bottom taxation, employment, and education programs, not one guy giving up all his wealth to give poor people a one-time cash bonus that most will immediately blow anyway.

Money isn't a magic cure

Bezo's ex-wife donated a lot of money. It will go to waste

mark zuckerberg donated $100 MILLION to Newark school system. It was completely pissed away. Thank cory booker

Why don't Bill Gates, Jeff, and Mark Zuckerberg end poverty, educate people and buy everyone a house. They can afford it.

You're right, r59. I've noticed this weird thing lately how so many Dataloungers just fundamentally don't understand the idea of a person's net worth. They think they all keep it in cash at the bank, and can withdraw it at a moment's notice--this came up in the thread the other day where people were debating the comparative wealth of Queen Elizabeth vs. Oprah Winfrey.

The wealthy (rather handily) believe that everyone else should “lift themselves up” like they did. Therefore most do not follow Andrew Carnegie’s example and give awaythe bulk of their fortune.

[quote] The wealthy (rather handily) believe that everyone else should “lift themselves up” like they did.

It's the only way to deserve what you have! Take it from someone who did pull himself up by his own bootstraps!

He's saving as much as he can to fix that lazy eye.

I've seen lazy eyes before, but that left one's collecting unemployment.

AOC made a rather prescient comment: no one earns a billion dollars; they take a billion dollars.

The real question is, why did so much of the wealth generated by Amazon go to one man instead of being distributed more equitably among the thousands of people who worked to make the business successful. It didn’t have to be distributed equally, but just so everyone got a share in the company’s success. The lowest paid employees barely survive on their pay.

Repeat for every other major corporation.

R69, you don't really lift yourself up by getting a $250,000 loan from your parents. It's impressive to see what Amazon has become, but he did get some financial help and luck plays into it, too. Being at the right place at the right time, having the right idea and capital are all important factors. There are certainly people out there who are smarter and more capable than most of these billionaires, but the stars don't always align perfectly for everyone. They can all do whatever they want to do with their money, I really don't care. But they should remember that they were very lucky to get to where they are.

Well R72, it's probably because the democrats care more about appeasing their rich donors than doing the right thing.

We know the repugs only care about the 1%. But the dems aren't any different. They just like to throw out some meagre crumbs to the 99%.

Look at the meme stock "thing". The biden government didn't ask why the hedgefunders wanted to or were legally allowed to just short a stock until the company went bankrupt. NO. Their first inclination was to condemn the people buying meme stocks. Got to protect the 1%

So R74, it's the Dems fault I suppose that they didn't stop Trump and the Repugs from passing the biggest tax giveaway to the rich in the history of the country, and I guess it's also the Dems fault that they couldn't stop the second Bush from cutting taxes for the rich, and it's the Dems fault that they let Reagan get away with everything he did.

By your logic, we should jail the employees of a bank when they fail to stop a robbery because the robbers would never have gotten away with it if the employees had been on their toes.

Setting aside whether anyone should or shouldn't be worth the billions that Bezos is worth, I have never seen a compelling argument that supports that he STARTED with some unfair advantages

His mother was a teen mother. At the time of his birth, his mother was a 17-year-old high school student and his father was 19.

He grew up middle class, became valedictorian and a national merit scholarship, got admitted to Princeton on his own without benefit of wealthy family or connections.

Other than being a smart and a good student, he didn't have any particular advantages that tens of thousands of people didn't also have in comparable or even greater measure.

While one MIGHT argue that he's run Amazon ruthlessly, he still had to start, build, and run Amazon for years before being ruthless would have mattered in any meaningful way to build it or the value of his ownership stake.

What EXACTLY is "not fair" about it that thousands of people could not also have done? With roughly 12,500 graduates from Ivy League schools each year, there have been roughly 300,000 Ivy league graduates since Amazon was founded and more than 450,000 since Bezos himself graduated. He certainly had no more "unfair" advantage than any other Ivy League graduates and probably substantially fewer than many of them when he started.

[quote] it's the Dems fault I suppose that they didn't stop Trump and the Repugs from passing the biggest tax giveaway to the rich in the history of the country, and I guess it's also the Dems fault that they couldn't stop the second Bush from cutting taxes for the rich, and it's the Dems fault that they let Reagan get away with everything he did.

It is their fault. They can't even get a cogent message across. They should have been screaming from the rooftops about those taxcuts. Instead most people don't even know about them

Although, after "defund the police". Maybe they should just shut up

[quote]Because that doesn't teach self-reliance and responsibility.

The problem for taxation is this perspective in America. It's not a criticism - it's certainly regrettable - but the collective is damned in this country and always will be. Everybody likes taxing rich people until the Democrats come up with a plan to tax them and then the Republicans bring out the tax and spend bogeyman and a majority fall for it... because self-reliance and responsibility.

There’s clearly a “smoke and mirrors” mechanism that kicks in that the super wealthy use- to divert attention away from themselves- when they feel the discussion is too focused on their wealth or trying to remove it from them. Suddenly, issues like racial disparity, gun violence, global warming and about a dozen other topics are prioritized by dozens of writers, bloggers and journalists.

It’s obvious because the topic of taxing the wealthy never sees more than three days of headlines before evaporating..

R79 I suspect those tactics will become less useful for the rich to deflect talk of taxation when issues like racial disparity, gun violence, global warming and about a dozen other topics are addressed.

By Democrats who, yes, need to do a shit-ton of work on their messaging but who will push the envelope far further with legislation to benefit more people than Republicans can stand.

And then pay for it. The rich have the money. In this economic and political climate, they'll pay more, especially when it only hits those with an income of more than $400,000 annually.