Jeff Bezos is now the richest person ever, but only because Bill Gates is so generous

By Sam Barsanti | January 10, 2018 | 1:04am

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According to Bloomberg, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos is now the richest person ever (though that does come with an asterisk). On Monday, as Amazon’s market value continued to ride a holiday high spurred by the fact that the online retailer controlled 89 percent of all online retailing during the five-week post-Thanksgiving shopping period, Bezos’ net worth surged past a staggering $105.1 billion. Bill Gates, meanwhile, is stuck at a pathetic $93.8 billion or so, but that’s partly because he insists on regularly giving away tons of money—including a donation of $4.6 billion in Microsoft shares that Bloomberg says he gave away in August of 2017. Either way, Bezos now has more money than Gates ever did, as long as you don’t account for inflation.

Last July, Bezos briefly passed Gates’ net worth for a few hours after Amazon’s stock price temporarily ticked up. Of course, as we noted at the time, a lot of Amazon’s success involves treating its lowest-level workers like shit, but surely everyone being worked to the bone in one of Amazon’s warehouses is still happy that their boss has over $105 billion dollars.