[Denver]

there has been a lot of discussion lately that there shouldn't be anyone who is a billionaire because you know why do they need that much money?

Take for instance Jeff Bezos who has become the first person worth £200b yet he pays his staff peanuts and refuses to pay them sick pay.

Its been noted that if all billionaires came together they could end problems such as poverty and homelessness yet would rather just have a big bank balance they can't really do much with.

I do believe people shouldn't have so much money and if they don't want to help people out they should be taxed heavily to help out people in need.

[UserSince2005]

aint no one taking my money off me.

[Niamh.]

Kind of makes you a bit sick, I don't know how someone could have that much money and be such a **** to their employees

[Denver]

Originally Posted by Niamh.

Kind of makes you a bit sick, I don't know how someone could have that much money and be such a **** to their employees

I've known people who worked for Amazon and they said it is the worst place to ever work and they only stayed there because they needed the money.

[Crimson Dynamo]

Originally Posted by Denver

I've known people who worked for Amazon and they said it is the worst place to ever work and they only stayed there because they needed the money.

isnt that most low paid jobs?

[Denver]

Originally Posted by LeatherTrumpet

isnt that most low paid jobs?

No I've worked in a lot of minimum wage places and been treated with respect and been looked after but Amazon won't even pay sick pay, think of that a guy is worth £200b but is to spiteful to pay sick pay.

Id put him on 80% tax

[Crimson Dynamo]

Originally Posted by Denver

No I've worked in a lot of minimum wage places and been treated with respect and been looked after but Amazon won't even pay sick pay, think of that a guy is worth £200b but is to spiteful to pay sick pay.

Id put him on 80% tax

they do pay you if you are sick and they have worked all the way through lockdowns with very little issue due to excellent covid precautions

in fact so good they are doing tours for other businesses to see how its done. I think i read that all q1 profits were spent on PPE

[joeysteele]

I think when you've wealth like that, yes, you could be expected to contribute far more in tax to your Country.

Wealth like that grows naturally onwards usually anyway.

I have no issues of anyone having great wealth , however I've always been of the view the strongest should bear the greater load in a Country.

So if they don't voluntarily flood from their excess wealth into the needs of their Countries.
Then yes, higher taxation is justified.

So I agree with all Denver has said here really.

[user104658]

What I think is important to understand, is that there's a difference between "a billionaire" and someone like Bezos. Should it be possible to accumulate a billion? I think maybe, just about passable.

10 billion is ridiculous. 100 billion is such an unfathomable amount of money for one individual to be hoarding that it starts to actually warp entire economies. Bezos is now at double that and snowballing. It isn't sustainable, something has gone completely wrong with capitalism for that to be happening.

[smudgie]

If you work hard and earn the money then fine.
Hopefully someone with that wealth would put most of it to good use.

[user104658]

Originally Posted by smudgie

If you work hard and earn the money then fine.
Hopefully someone with that wealth would put most of it to good use.

It is not possible to work hard enough to earn 200 billion dollars.

To put some math to it, if you live to 80 years old, you have lived for around 2.5 billion seconds. Most people start working at 20, and retire (these days) at around 70 so that's about 1.5 billion seconds.

To accumulate $200 billion, that equates to earning $130 every second for your entire working life. $8000 a minute, $450,000 an hour, over $11 million a day.

What level of "hard work" equates to that sort of income? It's so skewed it's actually hilarious.

[bots]

isn't a billion are rather arbitrary amount?

and whether sick pay is paid is a matter of regulation in the particular country the company is based in. For example, American regulations are much different to those applicable in the UK.

Many people are quite frankly just jealous that others are successful

[Denver]

Originally Posted by bitontheslide

isn't a billion are rather arbitrary amount?

and whether sick pay is paid is a matter of regulation in the particular country the company is based in. For example, American regulations are much different to those applicable in the UK.

Many people are quite frankly just jealous that others are successful

Success shouldn't come at the misfortune of others

[Crimson Dynamo]

Originally Posted by Denver

Success shouldn't come at the misfortune of others

the man is creating jobs and provides a brilliant service

we all use amazon i suspect

i have been a user since 2002

[bots]

Originally Posted by Denver

Success shouldn't come at the misfortune of others

again, that is up to the regulations in force in the country of operation

[Liam-]

Seeing as billionaires are very often created by exploiting people working in subpar conditions and on the most basic of incomes, I think it’s past time that they were celebrated as some sort of beacons of hope and honour.

Capitalism is gross and people like Bezos shouldn’t have the opportunity to hoard more wealth that 99% of the worlds population while people on the other end of the spectrum are starving to death and living on the streets, it’s just fundamentally wrong

[Crimson Dynamo]

647,500

At the end of 2018, Amazon's global workforce stood at a colossal 647,500, with 83,000 of those located in Europe. Due to the nature of its business, it employs far more staff than other U.S. tech giants like Google and Facebook. By comparison, Facebook had 37,700 employees worldwide as of March 2019

[Captain.Remy]

I have no issues with anyone earning their big money, but
-Contribute to society whether through charities, increased taxes etc There's a certain amountof money that has been proved doesn't bring happiness anymore nor what a human really needs. So do some good with it.
-Don't be a horrible company owner.

But I guess neither of the above are really what's happening today.

[Tom4784]

Billionaires should not exist as pretty much all of them got to that point through exploitation and pure greed. i think pretty much the only potential billionaire I can think of that seems like a thoroughly decent human being given her campaigns against the interests of her own class is Abigail Disney but I'm not sure if she's even a billionaire herself so she might not count.

If you're a billionaire and you aren't paying your employees properly or giving them the benefits they should have then you should be made accountable and forced to pay out. Bezos could ensure that every Amazon worker in the world were paid their due with benefits and he wouldn't be affected by it.

Billionaires are the real life equivalent of dragons that horde piles of gold.