The $8 million man

Benns' Belief

As a kid one of my favourite shows was The Six Million Dollar Man. I wouldn’t say it has aged well, particularly the not-so-special special effects. As kids we’d toss each other around on the playground and simulate the slow-motion sound from when Steve Austin was using his super strength.

But this column isn’t really about The Six Million Dollar Man; this is about the $8 million man.

Imagine for a moment that last year you made $8 million an hour. (Yes, I meant to write ‘hour.’) To be clear, I mean that for 24 hours a day, all year long, for each hour that passed, you were given $8 million.

I wish this were just a fantasy, but sadly it’s the reality for Amazon’s Jeff Bezos. As Report on Business magazine stated last month, Bezos earned $8 million an hour last year – or $70 billion in just one return of the sun. Nice gig.

Speaking of gigs, a new report from Angus Reid reveals nearly a quarter of Canadians are doing short-term work to meet rising living costs. And more than half of them take this gig work alongside their regular jobs – just to make ends meet. In the U.S., it’s more like a third of the population.

So Bezos is now worth $204 billion while a huge chunk of his countrymen (and women) are barely getting by. And he has made millions more by the time you’ve read this. If Bezos was a nation he’d be twice as rich as Ukraine, Bulgaria or Ecuador. And if it was for sale, he would have enough money to buy Greece.

Put another way, the new paramedic building that is desperately needed in Kawartha Lakes will cost $50 million. That’s just over six hours work for Mr. Amazon.

If this finds you irritated, I could suggest you buy your books locally or order from Canada’s Indigo chain instead. But honestly that wouldn’t make a dent in the $8 million man. The only thing that can change this reality is government action. There are plenty of Canadian billionaires where a policy adjustment is in order, too.

There are so many ways to fix this problem. (And if you don’t see this as a problem, you’re either a Chicago School of Economics groupie or Bezos himself.) People like this believe markets are self-correcting. And this is how we have rampant inequality across the world – because markets don’t care about people. Only people can care about people.

In the Nordic nations, they have successfully reduced income inequality through progressive taxation and social transfers to average people. And contrary to the notion that high taxes dampen economic activity, Nordic countries consistently rank high in global competitiveness indexes.

At least in The Six Million Dollar Man there was a clear hero. When it comes to the $8 million man and his like, there’s just consistent policy failure.