Throwing eggs at superyacht Jeff Bezos

In reply to NY Nick :

I was referring to the 4th of July? 

Oh, one of these threads? Nope.

yupididit said:

People really hate rich people for being rich lol. Funny how y'all pick and choose who to hate and who to support because of what you know from media. Just know that you don't know anything about your heroes either. Though a lot of people choose to ignore other things. 

Dude made himself uber rich. Get over it. 

I have heroes?  News to me.  Unless you mean people actually in my life like my father.
Talk about not knowing anything about people.

bearmtnmartin (Forum Supporter) said:

I just want to throw eggs at a boat. 

My whole adult life is I joke to youngsters near Halloween is whether they were going out "egging" or not.  

I've never gone out egging in my life.  

Mr_Asa said:

yupididit said:

People really hate rich people for being rich lol. Funny how y'all pick and choose who to hate and who to support because of what you know from media. Just know that you don't know anything about your heroes either. Though a lot of people choose to ignore other things. 

Dude made himself uber rich. Get over it. 

I have heroes?  News to me.  Unless you mean people actually in my life like my father.
Talk about not knowing anything about people.

I don't know if you have heroes. Why are you asking me? Do you?  Did I quote or reference you or are you just taking it personally because it fits? Or not?

 Unless you're all "people" in my general statement. If so, I understand and I apologize for targeting you, Mr People.

I'll say they same thing that I bring up every time we have one of these "evil rich people" threads. The only way to make everything "fair" is to make everyone poor and miserable. Which is the way most people lived through most of human history. Exponential progress has been made during the brief period of time in which a vast number of humans have had opportunity. A few of them take advantage of that opportunity, using their skill, hard work, and take a risk to fulfill a need to society. Sure, everyone wants to be 2022 Jeff Bezos. But I bet you that most would not want to be 1997 Jeff Bezos. They would have quit. Too much work, too much stress, too much risk. It's much easier to take it easy, play it safe, and complain about those who have done what they were unwilling to do. 
 

As others have mentioned, Bezos has very little to do with the boat/bridge issue. He's just the customer. I'm sure the factory and their employees appreciate the order. Bezos is only part of the story because no one would read the article without him in it. Everyone reading this likely owns items made by workers overseas that would love to be treated as well as Amazon's workers. Probably reading this post on an item like that. Does that make us all evil? 

No one on the "Eat The Rich" side has ever satisfactorily explained how giving someone a hard job at low pay is somehow worse than not giving them any job at all.

And the shipbuilders will happily pay to move the bridge since they now get to tell potential  customers that they built Jeff Bezos's yacht.

You used to be able to get to the top of the Washington monument by elevator, or stairs. There was never a wait for the stairs, but a 2 hour wait for the elevator. Don't get mad at the guy that took the stairs and got there while you're in line for the elevator, try the stairs yourself. 

In reply to Steve_Jones :

Ha!

I was at the Empire State Building a few weeks ago, and that EXACT thing happened. 
 

I took the stairs. 

What gets me about this argument is the bad math. How much is Bezos worth? Elon? Gates? All their corporations together? What's the fair share? Take it all. Every penny. Liquidate everything and spread it around. It wouldn't fund the government for more than a couple years, and then what? Who is the bad guy that we should be angry with?

There is such a thing as righteous anger. Justifiable anger. But if one is to act in a way as to truly change things for the better, one must be damn sure that anger is aimed correctly.
 

Thus far, we hear a lot about folks using loopholes that are perfectly legal. Why not go after the legislators that wrote the loopholes? Most of them have been sucking wealth from the little guy (literally) for several decades. That's as far as I'm willing to go on this thread. Good luck, all. 

SV reX said:

We are quick to applaud anyone who finds loopholes in racing.

I will sensibly chuckle at a cheat or loophole, but at the end of the day those jerks are the reason why rulebooks are a thousand pages long.

I was just amused at the thought of a bunch of dutchmen flinging eggs at a monster yacht but I see I  struck a nerve. 

I look at someone as wealthy as Bezos with some alarm, but if you put a cap on his earnings you need to decide how much is enough for everyone and that will throw cold water on free enterprise very quickly. And don't forget that his wealth is just a number. Almost all of it is in shares and it would make no difference whether his name is attached to them or if it is some large investment company. Its not actually money until he cashes them in, and if he does the money just goes into different investment vehicles and is effectively loaned to other people or put to work, just like a bank would. If you get away from the idea that all his billions are in a vault somewhere doing nothing then it makes more sense. Just think of someone like him as his own asset management group.

RevRico said:

I firmly believe there should be a maximum wage. There is NOTHING  ANYONE  could do that is worth $10s of thousands of dollars per minute. 

Ask any parent of a child that died young, if someone had a skill to save them, would it be worth $10s of thousands of dollars per minute? They'd say yes. 

Can I be the one to decides who deserves money and how much?

I can form a committee, and we will all decide.  In the spirit of rebirth, we can name it after a young chicken, so I will call it the Pullet Bureau.

In reply to NY Nick :

I could never and I mean ever twist my mind around to where your point of view makes sense to me. 

What anyone else has is absolutely non of mine or anyone else's business. 

That mindset just baffles me. 

To answer your question.  There is no magic number that is too much.  And to suggest otherwise is asinine. 

In reply to barefootcyborg5000 :

The US federal government spent 17.5 billion dollars on Wednesday. I'm not joking. So all of Bezos's money would fund the US government for about a week and a half.

If Bezos allegedly has enough money to end world hunger, if only he would, why doesn't the federal government just shake its couch and find the money to do it?

Steve_Jones said:

RevRico said:

I firmly believe there should be a maximum wage. There is NOTHING  ANYONE  could do that is worth $10s of thousands of dollars per minute. 

Ask any parent of a child that died young, if someone had a skill to save them, would it be worth $10s of thousands of dollars per minute? They'd say yes. 

Two points

A) creating a website to sell cheap chinese microwaves isn't exactly the same as saving children 

B) if a person has the ability to save a dying child but says "I will only do this if you pay me $10,000 a minute" then that person is a villain

But all that's beside the point. I dont make big money. I make ok money for ohio. I pay taxes because I like things like schools and roads and fire departments and libraries. Him not paying taxes doesn't make him smart, it makes him greedy. Paying employees so little that they need public assistance, that he didn't pay into, doesn't make him smart, it makes him greedy. I dont begrudge him for having money, I begrudge him for the taxes and the treatment of employees. 

In reply to gearheadmb :

1. I'm just pointing out the fallacy of saying "anything"

2. Some 5 minute operations can cost $50k. It's because of the skills some surgeons have. Should they give those skills that took years to learn away for free?

In reply to gearheadmb :

But all that's beside the point. I dont make big money. I make ok money for ohio. I pay taxes because I like things like schools and roads and fire departments and libraries. Him not paying taxes doesn't make him smart, it makes him greedy. Paying employees so little that they need public assistance, that he didn't pay into, doesn't make him smart, it makes him greedy. I dont begrudge him for having money, I begrudge him for the taxes and the treatment of employees. 
 

For some reason, there is a simple concept that the "Big business is bad" crowd just doesn't get. Business don't pay taxes. Period. Their customers pay 100% of all taxes. You could double their tax rate, add on fees, whatever you can dream up- it will be passed on to the customer. So when you say businesses don't pay enough taxes, you mean that you the consumer don't pay enough taxes. And that is an easy fix, just add in any additional amount that you care to contribute to the IRS on April 15th. Just add whatever makes you feel better, I'm sure they will appreciate it and spend it wisely. 

In reply to Boost_Crazy :

No, they get it, they just think that's "greedy" and that's what makes them evil.  They should be willing to make less money.

Never mind the fact that "greed" is the motivation behind about 95% of the advances in the human condition since the dawn of time.

j_tso said:

SV reX said:

We are quick to applaud anyone who finds loopholes in racing.

I will sensibly chuckle at a cheat or loophole, but at the end of the day those jerks are the reason why rulebooks are a thousand pages long.

That's true

If bezos (insert silly rich person) was Russian we'd be calling him an oligarch and sanctioning him for something.  
 

If there was a "what do you do for a living" thread in 1996 and someone posted 'I'm building a business, here I am in the office" people here would have told him he's wasting his time  and why it won't work.

I'm not gonna argue that there isn't a ton of waste in tax money, there is. But what the "taxation is theft" crowd needs to understand is it does provide a ton of things we all use every day. I see this whole tax thing like if a guy has a party and buys all the food and drinks, and then at a certain point they pass the hat around to cover some of the expenses. Now it would be perfectly legal for me to go hide in the bathroom when the hat comes out. It would also save me money, so that makes me a lot smarter than everybody else at the party right? Or would it make me kind of a POS?

In reply to gearheadmb :

Hiding would make you a POS. Only putting in $10 because you didn't drink when the drinkers are putting in $20 doesn't though.