 Everybody knows that Jeff Bezos, CEO of Amazon, is the richest man on the planet. He is worth $154.8 billion. But we don't ever really stop to think about just how large a sum of money that really is an actuality. Like let's just picture for a moment that we were going to spend some of that money and buy things that rich people buy. So of course the first thing you'd want to purchase is a mansion. How much does a mansion cost? They start usually at around $8 million if you want to purchase a mansion in Los Angeles. But let's say you want to purchase a really luxurious mansion and you spend $100 million and you know you wanted to splurge a little bit so you bought two of them. Let's also say that you know if you wanted to spend this money you wanted to buy a couple of cars, a couple of Lambos and you spent about $10 million on cars and you then went on to buy a yacht which costs you know $45 million if you're getting a really nice one and then you spent $10 million on a private jet and another $400,000 for maintenance each year. So if you're Jeff Bezos and you just spent all of that money how much of a dent would that make in your overall net worth? Barely any. The point is that even if he tried to spend this money in the most reckless way possible he would never be able to spend all of that money. He's 55 years old so he's not going to be able to spend all of that by the end of his life and in the event he were really really lucky and he lived to be a thousand years old he still would be unable to spend all of that money. So that's the point it's such a gigantic sum of wealth that it's difficult to even fathom how much money that is because you can go on a spending spree and purchase mansions and private jets and yachts and cars and still not even make a dent in your overall net worth. Meanwhile his employees work so hard that they are forced to pee in bottles to save time or they'll urinate in trash cans to save time. They'll be shamed to work often times even if they're injured and shouldn't work. Amazon workers also experience mental breakdowns usually as a result of harsh working conditions and they're barely even paid enough to survive. I mean do you think that's fair? Do you really think it's justifiable to have the CEO of a company make so much money that he can't even spend all of that in ten lifetimes let alone one while his employees are working in such harsh conditions that they're having mental breakdowns and they're peeing in bottles in order to remain as productive as possible that's not justifiable he's exploiting them he is exploiting them and Amazon they absolutely don't like when you point this out they don't like when you draw attention to their exploitative practices but this is wrong and we should point it out because this is a form of theft this is wage theft he's exploiting their labor and not sufficiently sharing the benefits of what they produced for him and then when people criticize them they panic and freak out for example Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez she basically made the same exact points that I just made however when she made this point since she actually has a real power in politics well they panicked and they felt compelled to respond immediately so as best leaven of vanity fair reports when Amazon announced in February that it would not be opening a second headquarters in Queens as previously announced representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez was one of the first lawmakers to claim victory tweeting that defeating Amazon's corporate greed its worker exploitation and the power of the richest man in the world was proof that anything is possible and four months later it appears her feelings about the company haven't changed speaking to ABC's this week on Sunday AOC asserted that the only way Jeff Bezos was able to become the richest man in the world with a net worth of 117 billion after giving his ex wife roughly 37 billion was by treating his employees like slave laborers noting that she has no issue with Bezos being obscenely rich if Amazon is paying its workers a living wage AOC added if that's the case and Jeff Bezos is still a billionaire that's one thing but if Bezos wealth is predicated on paying people starvation wages and stripping them of their ability to access healthcare that's a major problem and you'll never believe it but the tech giant did not take kindly to such comments these allegations are absurd Amazon said in a statement Amazon associates receive industry leading pay starting at $15 an hour Amazon prepays 95% of continuing education tuition costs through its career choice program for associates who want to pursue in-demand careers Jay Carney Amazon's head of communications later chimed in to say more than 42% of all working Americans earn less than the $15 an hour Amazon pays entry-level fulfillment center employees and all our employees get top tier benefits I'd urge AOC to focus on raising the federal minimum wage instead of making stuff up about Amazon last October after the tech giant raised its minimum wage Bloomberg reported that the company had eliminated stock awards and monthly bonuses for warehouse workers and other hourly employees so do you understand what they're doing they desperately whatever they're criticized try to get the person who's criticizing them to shut up because they don't want you to realize what they're actually doing and how they're treating and exploiting frankly their workers don't look at us look at all the other large multinational corporations who aren't paying their workers a $15 living wage at least we're doing that and that's great but let's remember that you actually didn't opt to pay your workers a $15 an hour living wage until you were shamed into doing that by Bernie Sanders you didn't do that on your own accord you did it because you wanted people to stop looking at you and to divert their attention elsewhere but let's also be realistic here a $15 minimum wage that may be better than other large multinational corporations but it's absolutely nothing to write home about because let's face it if you live in New York City if you live in Seattle $15 isn't enough to survive it's still not a living wage it's not I'm sorry it's not people are going to call me an extremist for pointing that out but let's be realistic here it's a $15 minimum wage because it's a minimum ideally you pay workers more than $15 because if you live in New York City how are you going to survive off of $15 an hour like it's absurd that the federal minimum wage isn't just $15 an hour already but even if we raise it to $15 an hour that's still not a livable wage and as time passes as Congress doesn't act and raise the federal minimum wage $15 well that's not as valuable as it was five years ago when the fight for 15 began so these companies they do the bare minimum and then expect praise from you while they're still exploiting their workers treating them unfairly not addressing the mental breakdowns that are happening in Amazon warehouses across the country it's absolutely maddening and it's important that people like AOC call out Amazon for what they're doing here because this is exploitative and they absolutely should not be allowed to exploit their workers and Jeff Bezos should never be allowed to amass that much money if his workers can barely survive what Amazon has been doing is they're taking advantage of a capitalistic system that is ruthless the laws need to be changed nobody should be able to amass more than a billion dollars in wealth one because they don't need it and two because you're never going to work that much harder than your employees to where that much money is justified because it's not so long as there is income and wealth inequality so long as there is homelessness so long as people have food insecurity in the United States nobody in this country should be allowed to amass that much money what do we do then we tax them we take that money because that's not their money that's the money that they stole from their employees and by taxing that we're just taking it back and we're giving it back to employees because they like to denounce taxes as theft but the real theft is them stealing that money and exploiting the labor of their workers in the first place so Amazon can cry all they want they can try to respond to AOC and claim that she's lying but they're only responding because they know they're in the wrong and they have to try to make sure that they divert attention away from them and it's true there are other large multinational corporations that are probably treating their workers a lot worse but that doesn't mean that we can't also focus on Amazon and when you have a CEO that is the richest man in the world I'm sorry you're just going to end up attracting a lot of attention