Jeff Bezos Meets the Ghost of Christmas Future
By: Stacy Becker
Tags: Christmas, Inequality, Satire, Capitalism, Economics

Jeff Bezos Meets the Ghost of Christmas Future

Complex systems are worlds where there is no direct cause and effect, and where small changes can make a big difference. Let’s suppose Jeff Bezos caught the Christmas spirit instead of COVID, and with a small-ish gesture, set in motion a new economic order.

I’ve been thinking.

So many stories warn about greed. There’s Midas, whose love for gold turned his daughter lifeless; the Grinch who stole the kids’ Christmas toys; and Ebenezer Scrooge’s terrifying witness of his future lonely death. All three were redeemed in the end, having learned their lessons.

It’s hard to take those warnings seriously in the United States, where wealth equals godlike status and the rich are admired rather than resented by a three to one margin. But I’ve been thinking.

I’m a smart guy (as well as the richest in the world). What would it take for me to avoid any fallout from wealth? And then the idea came to me: give away my money!

Yes, this goes against my grain. Among the world’s top ten wealthiest people, I’m tenth in charitable giving. But the ghost of Christmas future really scares me. I started imagining: what if, with all the unemployment and looming evictions, the economy craters and no one can buy my stuff? What if Blue Origin, my little $1 billion a year space hobby to support a trillion people in space, doesn’t work because all the people on earth are wiped out by COVID-19 or some other climate-change unleashed zoonotic disease? What if those tax-the-rich schemes take hold and Amazon’s federal tax refunds end?

So here’s the idea I came up with.

Everyone says that 2020 was a horrible year. But it was a great year for me! The value of my Amazon shares grew by $76 billion. That means I made about $36 million an hour. Nice work if you can get it, huh?

At $15 an hour, I feel like I pay my starting workers really well. Yeah, I took away their bonuses when I bumped the wages up, and I keep a close eye to make sure no labor union shenanigans take hold. But I hoped to start a trend with this higher wage, and some other companies did follow suit.

So what would happen if I recognized that Amazon employees were not only essential in delivering goods to Americans during the pandemic, but also essential to the growth in our share price. What if I gave out bonuses again?

I’m thinking I could base it on earnings per share, which will be around about $36 this year. I have 53 million shares (I sold off $10 billion worth of shares this year), so I’d have $1.9 billion to distribute to employees. This amounts to around 1% of the value of the total outstanding shares of Amazon, and 10% of the free cash flow we have on hand. It’s doable.

We recently hired a lot of new employees, so we’ll prorate the bonus to how long an employee worked with us in 2020. Let’s say that the math averages out to about 1 million employees or about $1,900 apiece. Not too shabby. At $15 an hour, it’d take an employee more than three weeks to earn that much.

Wouldn’t it be cool if I started another trend? One where CEOs recognize that their company’s stock performance depends a lot on how employees perform. One that created a sharing form of capitalism?

Like my rocket scientist hero, Werner von Braun said, “I have learned to use the word ‘impossible’ with great caution.”

This is so totally possible.

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P.S. In an interview Bezos said, “The only way that I can see to deploy this much financial resource is by converting my Amazon winnings into space travel. That is basically it.” Hmmm.

Should we share with Jeff some other ideas for “deploying financial resource?” Let’s hear yours!