According to "Amazon boss Bezos becomes world's third richest," boosted by his company's recently increasing profits from cloud computing, video streaming and its Prime membership services, the founder and CEO of Amazon now ranks behind only Bill Gates of Microsoft and Zara's Amancio Ortega as the third richest person on Earth, with a fortune estimated at $65 billion US (2016).
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My Yes/No question is:
Should anyone be this rich?
My answer is:
Yes. There is nothing wrong with being super rich, but you must have earned the wealth.
It's hard to imagine the sort of wealth that people like Bill Gates and Jeff Bezos have. They are certainly vastly wealthier than I will ever be, or anyone I know. Imagine being able to spend a billion dollars a year! I can imagine spending a few million dollars a year, but that's nothing compared to billions.
Why do I think that Gates and Bezos, and the Zara guy, of whom I've never heard, deserve their extreme wealth? Why do I think it's not excessive? I think they deserve to be so rich because they have worked very hard to create even greater wealth for the rest of us. For example, I use Microsoft products every day. The creations of Bill Gates power the computers that make life better for me and billions of other people around the world. In other words, Gates helps me create value in my life, and I'm very happy to pay him a small amount for that value added to my life. Who would want to go back to the bad old days of the past? Certainly not the poor whose lives were even worse then than they are today.
But I did put a the word but in my answer to my question. Many very wealthy people have done nothing to deserve the wealth they have, but merely inherited or stole it, whether directly or through unjust rule of law. These people do not deserve the vast wealth that they sometimes have. Perhaps when tax is being assessed, it should be on the basis of how much value the person has contributed to society: Bill Gates would then pay much less tax.
One final idea just came to me: if Bill Gates and other super rich people deserve their wealth, then it must be morally wrong every time we steal from them by using pirated computer software or street DVDs and the like.
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Reference
Amazon boss Bezos becomes world's third richest. (2016, July 29). BBC News. Retrieved from http://www.bbc.com/news/business-36917516
So, what can I do that will create such amazing value for other people that they will cheerfully pay me a billion dollars collectively?
ReplyDeleteI'm not greedy. I will definitely be happy with one billion, at least this week. I'm pretty sure that Gates and Bezos are not greedy either. They give away vast amounts that set a great example too few of the super rich follow, especially the undeserving who did not honestly earn their vast wealth.
If you would have read my post and the comment above and would like to respond, don't worry: you will soon be able to.
DeleteI am agree with you on a couple of your opinions. First, people who get rich because of working extremely hard deserve to enjoy with their income. Second, people getting rich from doing immoral, illegal, or unethical business are not deserve to be wealth. (But how can we make it right? Something they do might be very tricky and in grey area which laws cannot cover them all)
ReplyDeleteHowever, I do not agree that the wealthy people who contribute to society a lot could pay tax less. They should not gain this kind of monetary benefit. I think only reputation is expected to be acquired in return of those contributions.
Although there is a huge gap between the rich and poor people in my country, I still agree with you that there is nothing wrong to be rich as long as their financial source is legal. However,I do have different idea towards those who are rich because they inherit the wealth from parents or ancestors, I think they also fully entitle to the wealth. To illustrate, just because they are born with golden spoon in their mouth does not mean they are not justified for that money they do not earn themselves. They just have more luck.
ReplyDeleteBy the way, I love your idea about tax assessment. If it turns out that the people who inherit from their ancestor do nothing to contribute to global community, they will be punished by paying tax. I think this is fair enough.
Ken and Pun have both mentioned that if something is legal it's OK, although Pun's statement is much stronger.
DeleteI wonder do others agree with this? If an activity is legal, is that enough to make it OK?
But there are lots of other great ideas in PUn's and Ken's comments, especially their thoughtful reasons for disagreeing with me. In fact, I might want to change my mind about ...
I think some people deserve to be rich especially people who invented things or changed people’s lives in a better way.Since It isn’t against the law it’s ok to be extreme wealthy.I agree with the tax because it's encourage people to give back to the society.
ReplyDelete