Visual aid to show the difference between a million and a billion. He walked a million in a minute.. How long do you think it took to get to a billio?

[Rjk]

these huge companies now don't pay many of their workers a living wage, so they have to rely on state subsidies in order to live.
there was a time when you could earn a respectable living in a low skilled job, not any more.
instead the companies pay poverty wages and rely on the tax payers to subsidise those wages. they then dont contribute their fair share in tax. the entire system is skewed so that all the money ends up in the pockets if the super rich.

[delmbox]

BlueMatt - are you happy that this one singular poster often kills conversation with a waving smiley? I'd, personally, class it as mild trolling, but I suspect it's not a great look for your forum.

I don't know what it is between you two and personally I'd say the forum doesn't suffer, but as an outsider reading it makes it look like he doesn't have an answer to what you're saying to or asking him

[lardy]

I don't know. You tell me?

Well if you don't even know that about Amazon employees, I'd have to wonder why you've waded into the conversation.

[splott parker]

I do the Euromillions and, when the prize gets to really crazy numbers (£115m) I have worked out I would probably give £110m away to friends, family, and other causes and still have a stupidly healthy bank account, a paid for house, a nice car every year, and time to go on holiday.

Bezos is worth 1,635 times a £115m lottery win. What can he need the money for?

If he shared the money out, everyone's lives would improve. It may even act as a great motivator (I started as a teacher, and it was a motivational tool to think of helping kids improve their education and their lives). I left to join a firm, and was earning £40,000 a year. That was fine for me. Was offered a manager's role at £55,000 and, looked at my lack of debts, looked at my great work-life balance (at the time), realised my house was big enough (so was the mortgage), and don't really fancy a new car every 12 months and said "no ta".

I can't really understand the concept of needing more money when you already have plenty. Footballers bartering over an extra £10k a week when already earning £120k a week just seems greedy.

I think footballers are in a unique situation though. You’re about to sign a contract at, say, 27/28 years of age with the knowledge that very likely, in fact probably it’ll be for the highest wage you’ll ever earn in your life. Nearly all of us earn more as we get older with natural cost of living wage increases, it’d be strange if a run of the mill working man earned more in his mid 20s than he will in his 50s given 30 years of increases. Not so footballers, I can understand why they need to accumulate as much as they can in their twenties.

[xsnaggle]

I don't know what it is between you two and personally I'd say the forum doesn't suffer, but as an outsider reading it makes it look like he doesn't have an answer to what you're saying to or asking him

Matt, I won't engage with him. It's simple. He is a multi account troll and always has been. He gets pissed off because he tries to bait me and fails miserably every time. But he should be used to failing, that's why he has had so many accounts!

[xsnaggle]

Well if you don't even know that about Amazon employees, I'd have to wonder why you've waded into the conversation.

I didn't "wade in" to anything. I just passed a comment. Since when was that 'wading in'?
I just think that to suggest that people (Not him particularly) should not be allowed to have more than X amount of money will remove the incentive for people to do things, and that, overall cannot be good for anyone in the long term.
But it's just my opinion, you're free to disagree with it!

[lardy]

I didn't "wade in" to anything. I just passed a comment. Since when was that 'wading in'?
I just think that to suggest that people (Not him particularly) should not be allowed to have more than X amount of money will remove the incentive for people to do things, and that, overall cannot be good for anyone in the long term.
But it's just my opinion, you're free to disagree with it!

You used 'have' rather than 'earn' which is a better word. You can't earn a billion dollars, you can only do it by taking advantage of a very large number of people. That's part of the problem people have with it.

[CCFCC3PO]

Matt, I won't engage with him. It's simple. He is a multi account troll and always has been. He gets pissed off because he tries to bait me and fails miserably every time. But he should be used to failing, that's why he has had so many accounts!

It's my only account here, maybe you have a habit of creating other accounts and assume others behave the same way?

Back to Bezos, why does he need so much money? Simple question.

[xsnaggle]

It's my only account here, maybe you have a habit of creating other accounts and assume others behave the same way?

Back to Bezos, why does he need so much money? Simple question.

[xsnaggle]

You used 'have' rather than 'earn' which is a better word. You can't earn a billion dollars, you can only do it by taking advantage of a very large number of people. That's part of the problem people have with it.

Fair comment on 'earn', but you can make money whilst paying people a decent wage commensurate with their positions and abilities. Whether this individual did is another matter.
The point I was actually commenting on was 'Billionaires shouldn't be allowed' which, as I say will remove incentive for people to try.

[bigjoe]

He picked a nice day for it.

Just think, Jeff Bezos is worth $188 Billion...

Not paying for that PPE paid off then

[Rjk]

I remember someone telling me the problem with the world today can be demonstrated with a lined sheet of A4 paper.

if you hold it in portrait orientation, and the bottom of the page is £0 and the top of the page is £1 million, most people in the world are below the bottom line of the paper, most people in the UK are pretty close to the bottom of the page. these people could only dream of one day getting up to the top of one piece of paper.
if you pictures Jeff bezos' wealth in the same way, you would have a stack of A4 papers stretching 55km into the air.
you wouldn't be able to see the top.

billionaires shouldn't exist.

Updated now to 58.6 km or 200 billion dollars.

Or to put it another way - the euromillions prize when not on a roll over is usually about 14 million quid.
If you won that, and then won the next one, and the next one until you also had 2 billion how long would it take?

Well luckily there are 2 euromillions draws a week, so it would only take you a little over 137 years of winning every euromillions draw.

[splott parker]

I remember someone telling me the problem with the world today can be demonstrated with a lined sheet of A4 paper.

if you hold it in portrait orientation, and the bottom of the page is £0 and the top of the page is £1 million, most people in the world are below the bottom line of the paper, most people in the UK are pretty close to the bottom of the page. these people could only dream of one day getting up to the top of one piece of paper.
if you pictures Jeff bezos' wealth in the same way, you would have a stack of A4 papers stretching 55km into the air.
you wouldn't be able to see the top.

billionaires shouldn't exist.

How would anybody get their hands on that much A4 paper? So that’s a load of old bollocks