I'm Bill Hicks and I'm dead now.

jeff bezos: how about i create new ways to fuck over my employees and underpay them

jeff bezos: i’ve got it, i’ll legally not pay them while they’re still on the clock, and i’ll get the supreme court to agree with me

me: 

It’s remarkable to me that he could personally afford to fix Puerto Rico’s critical infrastructure, and still be among the top 10 billionaires in the USA afterwards. He could afford to completely repair Puerto Rico and still have enough money to be in the top 20. 

Jeff Bezos could afford to personally end world hunger for a year and still be among the top 10 US billionaires. He could feed the entire planet for 3 years and still be in the top 20.

If you had $133.2 billion in a savings account with an interest rate of 0.06% (the average rate), you would receive $79.9 million in interest every year without having to do anything. All he needs to do is keep breathing, and he will make 57 times more this year than an average US citizen will make in their entire lifetime. 

He could spend $80 million this year and would not even notice its absence.

It’s estimated that it would take $55 million and a year of work to fix Flint, MI’s water supply. 

Unhoused folk cost money to house.

Disabled folk cost money, too.

Immigrants cost money.

Trans folk cost money.

Nobody ever says, “Hey, how much does Jeff Bezos cost?” “How much does it cost us to have Elon Musk around, hoarding his money?” “What’s it costing us to have all these fabulously wealthy people?”

It’s costing us a lot more than we ever talk about. Not just because their hoarding of wealth takes that money out of circulation and contributes directly to poverty and the spiralling cost to human beings everywhere.

Also because things are being framed in this way, because we are being forced to think of ourselves and others in terms of cartoon dollar symbols.

That is not a natural state of affairs for humans, it is not something that is morally defensible, and it is something that eats away at each of us in different ways depending on our position vis à vis wealth.