A lot of these net worth increases are from the rising value of companies whose shares they own a lot of (e.g. Amazon in Bezos’s case)
Many people aren’t interested in a life of leisure. They want to create, achieve, and strive. In the same way that someone may want to spend more time creating art, people like Bezos and Musk want to spend more time creating companies that build and make things. Both of them spend a lot of their time on passion projects having to do with space travel, for example.
So the question is: okay, you make your billion and you retire. What then? Lie around and watch TV and stuff? A lot of people are not interested in that.
The part about continuing to make stuff I understand, the fact that they continue to harm others in order to squeeze every last drop of additional money out of everything is the part I’ll never understand
This really is the crux of it. When you try to manipulate government to avoid taxes. When you prevent unionization. Abuse workers for profit. There’s no shortage of negative behaviors and actions by the Uber-wealthy like Musk and Bezos that don’t have anything to do with being creative but definitely point towards them being greedy and controlling assholes.
Its also unfortunate that the comment you responded to takes the “well they’re not really rich” with the “it’s their investments that went up, they didn’t make any money” soft apologist stance when it comes to the Uber-wealthy. Those investments are as good as cash in the bank, they’re leveraged for low interest loans that help dodge taxes. Those loans are cash in the pocket.
A lot of these net worth increases are from the rising value of companies whose shares they own a lot of (e.g. Amazon in Bezos’s case)
Many people aren’t interested in a life of leisure. They want to create, achieve, and strive. In the same way that someone may want to spend more time creating art, people like Bezos and Musk want to spend more time creating companies that build and make things. Both of them spend a lot of their time on passion projects having to do with space travel, for example.
So the question is: okay, you make your billion and you retire. What then? Lie around and watch TV and stuff? A lot of people are not interested in that.
The part about continuing to make stuff I understand, the fact that they continue to harm others in order to squeeze every last drop of additional money out of everything is the part I’ll never understand
This really is the crux of it. When you try to manipulate government to avoid taxes. When you prevent unionization. Abuse workers for profit. There’s no shortage of negative behaviors and actions by the Uber-wealthy like Musk and Bezos that don’t have anything to do with being creative but definitely point towards them being greedy and controlling assholes.
Its also unfortunate that the comment you responded to takes the “well they’re not really rich” with the “it’s their investments that went up, they didn’t make any money” soft apologist stance when it comes to the Uber-wealthy. Those investments are as good as cash in the bank, they’re leveraged for low interest loans that help dodge taxes. Those loans are cash in the pocket.