Amazon.com Inc. Founder Jeff Bezos, a key figure in modern business, saw a massive increase in his net worth from $107 billion in early 2023 to $177 billion a year later, marking a $70 billion gain, according to Fortune. This equates to an increase of $191,780,822 per day or about $7,990,868 per hour. https://finance.yahoo.com/news/jeff-bezos-made-over-7-172628289.html
What's wrong with being wealthy? Jeff Bezos built Amazon from nothing, spent 15 years as the laughing stock of the financial market before finally making profits to where it is today. In the process he has employed over 1.6 million people and created 40,000 millionaires. He has my respect!
What i wrote was a joke, actually, if a person is jealous of someones wealth, that's an instant red flag.
Not all companies could claim they were Sovereign Citizens and avoid collecting sales taxes. Congress picked Amazon over the Bricks like Sears, Targets, Krogers and Walmarts, ect while super charging Amazon’s unfair advantage.
You have to replace things in context. Amazon's model didn't exist before and governments (fed and states) weren't equipped to deal with the novelty. Their interest was to put people to work and Amazon was hiring massively. In exchange they gave the company tax advantages and Amazon took advantage of it. I agree that at some point (too late) Amazon should have been required to collect sales tax and compete fairly with brick and mortar. Businesses operate within the parameters given by government and will use their influence and power to expand those parameters as much as possible. Weak government bend, while strong governments don't. Much depends on the state of the economy and the leverages either has. Capitalism at work!
%% Excellent points. Interesting, tried to buy 3 books off them this week, not going to happen, current crew just isn't as good\ and customer service=lousy. But on topic /he did a good job AMZN/ sure changed the book market; and his idea of letting read a couple of chapter online , free = excellent. For many years if a WA sold books to TX customer =no sales tax, most logical; but the tax + spend lobby may have changed that. NOT tax or stock advice LOL[edit customer service could not fix the order problem/ but were polite]
Not paying sales tax across state lines existed well before Amazon. You can thank the states rights founding fathers. Amazon exploited it and now the loophole is closed for everyone. I remember buying my wife’s diamond ring in NYC and having them ship it to NJ to avoid the sales tax In 2006. No more. In fact the govt chose the bricks over Amazon.