World's Richest Man Treated Like Saint for Donating 0.03% of Wealth

Jeff Bezos, the richest man in the world, donated $33 million to a scholarship fund for DACA recipients today.

Many media outlets wrote this news up, including CNBC, the Wall Street Journal, Politico, the New York Times and Bezos’ own Washington Post. The write-ups included nice lines from Bezos’ press release and comparisons to President Donald Trump, making Bezos seem even more saintly by contrast with the man who calls other countries “shitholes.”

But no one seems to have noted that $33 million, an unimaginable amount of money to you or I, represents 0.03% of Jeff Bezos’ current $108 billion wealth. It is nothing to him. He could leave that as a tip every time he goes to Chipotle and never notice.

In fact, since I started writing this article, I discovered that Forbes lists his wealth as $107 billion $108 billion, not $105 billion as I thought it was. That changed the full percentage of his donation to 0.03055555555, from 0.03142857142. An additional $3 billion is literally a rounding error.

0.03 percent of the total dollars in both my checking and savings accounts as of today—a payday for Splinter employees, I should note—would be $1.32. This doesn’t include my $24,000 in student loan debt and some amount of credit card debt—I refuse to know how much—making my actual personal wealth approximately minus infinity. In November I donated $100 to a homeless charity in D.C. Where’s my goddamn Washington Post article!!! Give it to me!!!