Jeff Bezos Adds Record $13 Billion in Single Day to His Fortune

[demmiblue]

Source: Bloomberg

Jeff Bezos added $13 billion to his net worth on Monday, the largest single-day jump for an individual since the Bloomberg Billionaires Index was created in 2012.

Amazon.com Inc. shares surged 7.9%, the most since December 2018 on rising optimism about web shopping trends, and are now up 73% this year.

Bezos, Amazon’s 56-year-old founder and the world’s richest person, has seen his fortune swell $74 billion in 2020 to $189.3 billion, despite the U.S. entering its worst economic downturn since the Great Depression. He’s now personally worth more than the market valuation of giants such as Exxon Mobil Corp., Nike Inc. and McDonald’s Corp.

Mackenzie Bezos, his ex-wife, gained $4.6 billion Monday and is now the 13th-richest person in the world.

Read more: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-07-20/jeff-bezos-adds-record-13-billion-in-single-day-to-his-fortune?utm_content=business&utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=socialflow-organic&cmpid=socialflow-twitter-business

[bucolic_frolic]

1. Monopoly is not good for competition or capitalism or consumer welfare

It leads to high prices.

In 1980 or so the government broke up the Bell System. Why can't they do that today? Because one man's persona is the symbol of the company, and AT&T was just a corporation?

[jimfields33]

2. I wonder if it's because the phone is a utility that everyone had back in the day

Amazon is a store that people don’t need. Maybe the reason.

[bucolic_frolic]

4. Well yes, phone companies were a regulated utiity

But the government does sometimes break up companies that have grown too dominant in their industry. Often it's a matter of pricing power, how much damage they are doing to consumers. The biggest online and offline retailers do the damage to competing retailers of course, mom and pop's in particular.

[ZZenith]

3. Time to eat the rich.

[appalachiablue]

5. Bring back anti trust laws which Reagan began dismantling

Last edited Mon Jul 20, 2020, 09:08 PM - Edit history (1)

before it's all devoured. It's what happens when industry is unregulated, the predictable and dangerous pooling into monopolies.

"Monopoly Mayhem," Robert Reich, July, 2020

..As the federal government all but abandoned antitrust enforcement in the 1980s, American industry grew more and more concentrated. The government green-lighted Wall Street’s consolidation into five giant banks. It okayed airline mergers, bringing the total number of American carriers down from twelve in 1980 to just four today. Three giant cable companies came to dominate broadband. A handful of drug companies control the pharmaceutical industry.

> Today, just five giant corporations preside over key, high-tech platforms, together comprising more than a quarter of the value of the entire U.S. stock market. Facebook and Google are the first stops for many Americans seeking news. Apple dominates smartphones and laptop computers. Amazon is now the first stop for a third of all American consumers seeking to buy anything.

The monopolies of yesteryear are back with a vengeance. Thanks to the abandonment of antitrust, we’re now living in a new Gilded Age, as consolidation has inflated corporate profits, suppressed worker pay, supercharged economic inequality, and stifled innovation...

https://robertreich.org/post/623012667052949504

[pecosbob]

11. They'll just get more lawyers

Let's bring back the tumbril and guillotine.

[farmbo]

6. Hey Jeff... how about using $1B of that...

... to pay the poll tax fines for the 1,000,000 Florida released convicts who were robbed of their voting rights by the GOP.

C’mon... do something for our democracy. It’s done a lot for you.

[empedocles]

7. bezos still squeezing amazon employees, and running amazon general good citizen ads.

[dalton99a]

8. His tax rates are still too high

[BigmanPigman]

9. Can Wareen do something about this if she is on

the next cabinet (assuming the Dems win)?

[Shermann]

10. Stormy Daniels' hush money payment was $130,000

Bezos could have a nice even 100,000 such affairs, all kept nice and quiet.

I'm not saying he should, just that he could.