U.S. personal income posts first drop in over three years

Re:U.S. personal income posts first drop in over three years by jartelt on Friday March 01, 2019 @11:35AM (#19282359)

Amazon also wouldn't exist in their current capacity without all their warehouse workers. I think the idea is that Bezos could have either sold some of Amazon stock over the years and paid his warehouse workers a better wage or he could have put some of his shares into an options pool for his warehouse workers. If he did that maybe he would only have $10B in wealth today, but many warehouse workers would be better off.

Instead, he kept all those shares and has more money than he could ever spend and many warehouse workers have worked incredibly hard and been unable to build any wealth over the years.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:U.S. personal income posts first drop in over three years by mjburgess on Friday March 01, 2019 @11:50AM (#19282554)

This myth of "more money than can spend" is pretty pathological.

It's not true. He uses his money to fund space flight initiatives, and many other things besides.

Billionaires use their billions to make more billions. If it was wasted on unproductive spending, the future would be poorer than the present.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:U.S. personal income posts first drop in over three years by thegayngler on Saturday March 02, 2019 @02:16PM (#19290633)

Is it unproductive spending? What makes you think that workers who want to live a decent life are spending unproductively? Why is it more productive to spend money on space flight initiatives?

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:U.S. personal income posts first drop in over three years by dpark on Friday March 01, 2019 @12:03PM (#19282739)

> I think the idea is that Bezos could have either sold some of Amazon stock over the years and paid his warehouse workers a better wage or he could have put some of his shares into an options pool for his warehouse workers.

The board of directors can allocate stock to warehouse workers and/or pay them more. For that matter, you could send your money to these warehouse workers and yet you don't. This idea that Bezos should personally give up his fortune to increase warehouse worker compensation is a bit absurd. Amazon isn't a charity and its employees are not a registered 503c, either.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:U.S. personal income posts first drop in over three years by jartelt on Friday March 01, 2019 @08:12PM (#19286804)

Yes, the board could have absolutely done that. And Bezos could have asked the board to do that as well, but chose no to. If the company did that, I argue it would have been just as successful (if not more) and many of their low wage workers would be more loyal and would have more wealth. The primary difference would be Jeff Bezos having a smaller fortune.

For profit companies can pay their workers better and still prosper. No one is suggesting Amazon should have been a non-profit. The suggestion is just that their CEO could have shared the wealth more with his workers. Workers who helped him build his fortune.

[ Parent | on HN ]