[minhazm]

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?

[generalk]

    > 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.

[ac29]

> 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.

[nkohari]

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...)