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Comment by generalk | Hacker News Reader

  > it's misleading to call equity compensation "getting paid".

Please.

A person who has a portfolio worth tens/hundreds of millions of dollars does not have to liquidate it to leverage its value. They can secure cash loans on extremely preferential terms backed by their assets, for one.

Futher, who cares if it's "exactly the same as giving them money" or not? That doesn't change the inequality inherit in such compensation packages, just how they pay taxes.

    > [neither reducing cash or equity comp] is going to 
    > solve the structural problems of the american economy 
    > such as healthcare being tied to employment.

Sure, that's true, but that's also a fine way to allow wealth inequality to continue unchecked. Jeff Bezos can't be worth over $100B unless his company is vastly underpaying and mistreating its workers.

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Amazon has been paying Jeff Bezos the same $81,840 salary since 1998. On file it says he gets about $1.6 million per year, but that's mostly security costs. He doesn't get any bonuses and he doesn't get any more equity. So none of the profits that Amazon has been making have been going towards Jeff Bezos pocket to make him richer. He's worth what he is because he owned something like 43% of Amazon at IPO.

If Jeff Bezos quit Amazon in 1998 after the IPO and we were here today at the same > $3000 per share price of Amazon, Jeff Bezos would still be worth over $100 billion and would have had nothing to do with Amazon for the last 22 years. So I don't see how you can draw the conclusion that Jeff Bezos can't be worth $100 billion unless they're mistreating their workers. Those things don't have to be connected.

Now should Jeff Bezos be worth that much? Probably not. But he's worth that much because he owned a large stake in Amazon. Anyone could have purchased Amazon at IPO and would have been up over 2000x right now. If you put $500k into Amazon at IPO you'd also be a billionaire right now, does that mean that Amazon is mistreating their employees because of you?

> So none of the profits that Amazon has been making have been going towards Jeff Bezos pocket to make him richer.

For this to be true, Amazon's profits would have to have no effect on its share price.

The comments in this subthread are talking about CEO salary. The point being, Bezos isn't rich because of his salary, he's rich because he owns shares, so adjusting his compensation isn't going to make a meaningful impact to the prosperity of Amazon employees. (Managing to effectively tax the corporation might though...)

    > So I don't see how you can draw the conclusion that 
    > Jeff Bezos can't be worth $100 billion unless they're 
    > mistreating their workers. Those things don't have to 
    > be connected.

But...they are connected.

Bezos is not just a large shareholder of AMZN, he's also it's CEO. He is responsible for every decision, ultimately, such as warehouse worker count and compensation. If they make less, he can put what he would have paid them into other product lines, thereby increasing AMZN stock price and his personal wealth.

Jeff Bezos could choose to pay his employees a living wage and treat them with dignity, but that may impact AMZN's bottom line or its share prices, so he doesn't.

    > If you put $500k into Amazon at IPO you'd also be a 
    > billionaire right now, does that mean that Amazon is 
    > mistreating their employees because of you?

This is a stupid hypothetical. I wouldn't be the CEO, so the decision wouldn't be mine. And I'm assuming I somehow didn't buy a significant enough sum of stock to be able to influence shareholder votes.

Stop defending billionaires. They won't defend you.

I always find myself in the weird position, that i think, i have to defend this kind of wealth. I do not think, that wealth inequality gets fixed by criticizing it, while at the same time i am using the services, that Amazon offers and has benefited my life. The same for by the whole world. By millions of people and companies. I paid for this wealth inequality. I take the full blame. I would switch without hesitation to something else, if it is better.

The solution for me is not to redistribute wealth by force from someone, whom i have paid before for a great service. That does not compute for me. It feels like a not justifiable punishment.

So for me the question is rather, what are the alternatives. Am i happy with AWS? Of course not. Do i want people to deliver packages and get paid badly? No. Do i find automatic package delivery attractive? Yes. But then driver lose their jobs. How to deal with that.

How to create wealth on the new foundations, where more people can participate? And dont i already see signs of it?

And, skilled labour is always wanted. All the non-computer, but crafty people do well. Everyone who can build something, that others want and cant build it, bcs... they do other things for others.

Ah, but its a useless rant.

Maybe the US is doing the right thing, bringing back the production side of things back home, so this kind of margin will be closed. Maybe it will increase then even more the productivity to make up for it. Who knows.

> Maybe the US is doing the right thing, bringing back the production side of things back home, so this kind of margin will be closed.

We've spent the past 50 years tearing down our ability to do so, why would we possibly reverse course?

There does appear to be a push away from globalization and towards isolationism. However, this may not last, and even if so, it remains to be seen whether the government will be able to effectively encourage corporations to move manufacturing back on-shore.

    > I always find myself in the weird position, that i 
    > think, i have to defend this kind of wealth.

You can easily just...not.

To continue using Bezos as an example: sure, he built a logistical empire that can deliver cat litter to my home in under 48hrs, and a computing empire that's surprisingly well used despite being absolutely obtuse.

If that's all he did, and everyone who worked for Amazon was treated well, made middle-class salaries without overworking themselves, and had world-class healthcare? Sure. I got no complaints.

But that isn't what's happening. Wealth inequality isn't "I'm jealous of someone" or "I'm opposed to this just because" -- it's recognizing that it only seems to happen when the folks on the bottom of the org chart suffer.

Jeff Bezos is a bad example for the point you're trying to make. He's worth that because he held (and built) an asset that increased massively in value over the past ~30 years. Not because his comp was too high.

Bezos' asset wouldn't have increased in value so massively if he'd done things like paid his warehouse workers living wages.

It's not compensation in the "the company paid for my time" sense, but it sure affects the decisions that he makes as CEO.

(But yeah, for the original point about compensation, Bezos perhaps was a poor choice. I'm rolling with that decision.)

Couldn’t his company be worth more than a trillion because it’s...adding far greater value to the ecosystem it exists in? And his share is in the ~100B as he captures the upside through being a founder and taking the early risk?

But he didn't? Yer man Travis was the founder, this dude Dara is just a career executive brought in to turn around the ship. He basically hasn't taken any risks, with respect to Uber at least.

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