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Perspective: A Message To The Billionaires

Matti Blume - CC BY-SA 4.0 (remixed)
/
Wikimedia

The next time someone tells you the rising level of income inequality in the U.S. is NOT a problem, consider this:

Jeff Bezos, the Founder and CEO of Amazon, is 55 years old.

His net worth is currently about $105 BILLION.

He reportedly sells more than a million shares of the company each year.

And, he’s easily earning a fortune on interest on the interest on the interest on the cash from shares he’s previously sold since taking the company public in 1997.

How much money is this? A lot.

Let’s say that Bezos is liquid to a THIRD of that net worth: $35 BILLION.

At his age, 55, he can expect to live to about 80, according to current actuarial data.

That’s 25 years or 9,125 days or 219,000 hours or 13,140,000 minutes.

Let’s assume he earned ZERO interest on that money over the next 25 years.

To deplete that $35 BILLION, he would need to spend $3.8 million A DAY for the rest of his life.

That’s $159,817 AN HOUR.

Or $2,663 A MINUTE. For the rest of his life.

Yay, capitalism, right? Sure. But no human being needs even close to this amount of money.

Especially when we have a country with far too many citizens lacking basic physical and mental health care, medicine, food, education, and affordable housing. Something’s gotta give.

I spent about 20 minutes researching and writing this post and another 90 seconds delivering it to you, fair listener.

In that time, Jeff Bezos would have had to spend $57,254.

I’m Wester Wuoriand that’s my inexpensive Perspective.

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