Jeff Bezos, the CEO of Amazon, should be consumed by the public in a grand feast. Bezos is currently the richest person in the world, with a net worth of $184.9 billion. Bezos makes $2,489 each second, in comparison, the average full time worker makes $876 a week. Bezos is also known to exploit his workers. Despite Bezos having more money than he could logically spend in 20 lifetimes, he gives less to charity annually than other top billionaires, including Warren Buffet, the CEO of Berkshire Hathaway, and Bill Gates, the CEO of Microsoft.
Bezos became a billionaire in 1997, and from 2000-2017 he has given away a measly $68 million, which is .10% of his personal wealth. In contrast, Gates directed 22.2 percent of his wealth during the same period. Warren Buffett donated a whopping 71.1 percent of his wealth to charity between 2000 and 2017. Mackenzie Bezos, Jeff Bezos ex Wife, has given more money away than Bezos annually, at $1.7 billion a year, while being worth $59.3 billion. Bezos’ largest donations include: $10 million to the Museum of History and Industry in Seattle 2011 and $15 million to Princeton’s Neuroscience Institute. Also in 2012, he donated $2.5 million to Washington United for Marriage. In 2018 he donated $2 billion to fund education programs for the homeless. Finally, in early 2020, Bezos donated $10 billion to fight climate change.
So let’s make a list of what Jeff Bezos could easily fix with about ¼ of his personal wealth:
According to the Huffington post, it would cost about $20 billion for the government to effectively eliminate homelessness in the United States.
Joel Berg, CEO of Hunger Free America, has calculated the cost of ending hunger in the US at $25 billion.
For $10 billion dollars, he could remove 526,315,789 pounds of plastic from the ocean
Bezos could pay $55 million dollars to fix Flint Michigan’s pipeline.
For $500 million, he could fund the buy back program for gun reform.
Bezos could easily solve some if not all of America’s most pressing, crippling issues; However, he chooses to hord his growing, unnecessary personal wealth. He is the emiptime of greed and gluttony. Because of his actions, the joke that society should “Eat Jeff Bezos,” arose on Tik Tok as people exposed his malicious behavior. If a person has privilege, it is their responsibility to help the less fortunate. While he has an incredulous amount of privilege as an extremely wealthy white male, he often turns a blind eye to those suffering in his own country. It is my opinion that the public should eat Bezos to symbolically share his wealth because of this selfishness. Bring your forks and knives people, we’re gonna eat.