August 8, 2025
I have always been a reader of history. 20% of my consumption has been in history-related titles. My list over the past few years is below.
I believe history doesn’t repeat, but it does rhyme. It was George Santayana who wrote in 1905: “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”
We observe the heat generated today by the tremendous wealth disparity on display. The Bezos wedding is perhaps the most obvious example. I think he’s entitled to spend his money however he wants, so I lean Libertarian on this one, but I also believe the ostentatious display, complete with media coverage, was not a thing of grace and style, IMO.
Bezos is worth $400B. Nearly all of his wealth is in Amazon stock, so he sells stock to raise cash. He never really had a salary; he took the full entrepreneurial risk of making his money through the company’s success. Since the stock is in long-term capital gains, he pays a 20% tax rate (not zero as some would have us believe). In 2024, he sold $13B in stock and paid $2.7B in taxes.
Most recent 12 months, Amazon paid $12B in taxes, a 17% rate on their net profits. The average salary at Amazon is $57,000. Amazon had $593B in operating expenses, and that comprises salaries (which are taxed) and plant and equipment (which is taxed) but then offsets kick in to encourage plant and equipment investment to reduce the tax bill.
Bezos has so far given away $3.7B to charities and his ex, MacKenzie Scott has given away $16B (from their divorce settlement). Further, Bezos has pledged to give away all his wealth in his lifetime.
I’m just saying, we don’t want guys like this moving to France.
At any rate, it may help to know that the disparity we see today is nothing new. America has been there before, and it all rhymes. I’ve attached above a link to a two hour documentary on The Gilded Age, that period when the industrial revolution created immense wealth among a few capitalists…Goodyear in tires, Vanderbilt in railroads, Carnegie in steel, JP Morgan in finance (although he himself was not as wealthy as he could have been).
Substitute ‘telegraph’ for ‘internet’, and you see the rhyming taking shape. It was a time when industrial processes could be harnessed to leverage individual effort and so send upward massive amounts of wealth, from a teeming and crowded underclass of workers to the owners taking full advantage of their advantages.
Another, the Vanderbilt party in the documentary is a direct rhyme to the Bezos wedding.
What we need to know is that wealth disparity resulted in violent protest. People died. Unions flourished and union work stoppages featured armed guards hired by the owners who from time-to-time discharged firearms into crowds. The violence was much, much worse than anything we have seen today. But I have to say that should we see that emerge, it has a precursor in the Gilded Age.
But it is also true that the country survived it and moved forward. That wealth disparity ultimately narrowed…the Great Depression wrecked the elites with stocks like RCA (the Apple of its day) dropping 90%. But the country was left with world-leading industries and companies that accumulated wealth whether trickling up or down or broadly spreading out. The migration of Americans of African descent from the deep South to the Rouge River Ford plant in Detroit an obvious example.
The wealthy can only do three things with their money. They can spend it (on a wedding, on a boat, on a ring, on a Big Mac), they can invest it (Blue Origin, SpaceX), or they can give it away (Bill Gates just gave away $51 billion). And that’s you and me too, except that what we spend it on tends toward providing the basics…the mortgage, the trip to Publix, the car payment. But then you have your 401K (invest it), and you give money to charity. But spend, invest or give as well.
Before wealth-envy grips us by the throat, if the country just waits it out, the wealth gets dissipated and flows into the great river of America’s economy. Tell me…where do you read about the fabulously wealthy Vanderbilts today? Or the fabulously rich Goodyear family, or the Morgans or the Carnegies? Carnegie lives on in the Carnegie Foundation, but they don’t walk red carpets any longer.
See, life chips away at it. Bad investment decisions, profligate inheritors (rags to rags in three generations), inflation, and…taxes. Roughly, the American people will get 50% of Mr. Bezos fortune when he passes unless he gives it to charity in which case his estate tax is a kind of 100% tax rate, if you follow that.
So patience will pay, “we” will get it all eventually.
We don’t have to kneecap him today, rather, let him grow it. Meanwhile, he seems to be racing to build a space program on his dime which we benefit from.
You read a lot about how the wealthy “escape” inheritance taxes, but in my experience working for them, that mostly comes down to giving it away (charitable donations) and tortuous planning that essentially postpones some of the taxes but the tax man eventually has his due.
But more importantly, we can lose a piece of our freedom. We tend to think of freedom in terms of speech. Economic freedom is less spoken of but the crucial link that makes us better than the Communists or the Socialists. They eventually drive countries to despair and bankruptcy. It is an immutable lesson of history.
It was called the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. Is that where we want to go?
I guess if I asked the bartenders and wait staff and caterers and seamstresses who got paid for working that wedding, I think they would be pro-Bezos wedding.
And just to say, that I do understand there are tremendous needs across our society to help. But I also believe that today’s needs are going to be even greater in the future and so, some money in the bank for that might be preferable to emptying the billionaire wallet today.
Watch the Gilded Age. And as you do, think about the parallels to our situation today. And see how class warfare erupted and how conflict came to the fore as frustrations mounted.
But take heart…this country is infinitely more resilient than people believe, and the rhyming of history can give you perhaps a better outlook on all of this.
We’ll be fine.
| Book | Author |
| The Passage of Power | Robert Caro |
| The Ugly Renaissance | Alexander Lee |
| Embattled Rebel | James McPherson |
| The Victorian City | Judith Flanders |
| The House of Morgan | Ron Chernow |
| Sailing the Wine Dark Sea: Greeks Matter | Thomas Cahill |
| The Guns at Last Light | Rick Atkinson |
| The President’s Club | Nancy Gibbs |
| Custer’s Trials | TJ Stiles |
| Pax Romana | Adrian Goldsworthy |
| Hemingway’s Last Days | Michael Reynolds |
| Shattered | Jonathan Allen |
| Killers of the Flower Moon | David Grann |
| The War of the World | Niall Ferguson |
| Tough Without A Gun | Stefan Kanfer |
| Eisenhower | Calo D’Este |
| World War II At Sea | Craig Symonds |
| Pacific Crucible | Ian Toll |
| Live From Cape Canaveral | Jay Barber |
| Venice | Peter Ackroyd |
| Wicked River | Lee Sandlin |
| With the Old Bread | EB Sledge |
| Palimpsest | Gore Vidal |
| The Hero | R |
| Churchill | Roberts |
| Lenin | Volkogonov |
| Leonardo Da Vinci | Isaacson |
| American Colossus | HW Brand |
| 1861 | Ian Toll |
| The Splendid and the Vile | Adam Goodheart |
| The Conquering Tide | Ian Toll |
| Twilight of the Gods | Ian Toll |
| Chaos | James Gleick |
| The Guns at Last Light | Rick Atkinson |
| The South Pole A Historical Reader | Anthony Brandt |
| The Ulysses Voyage | Tim Severin |
| Blind Man’s Bluff | Sherry Sontag |
| M Son of the Century | Antonio Scurati |
| Bomber Mafia | Malcolm Gladwell |
| Trial by Ice | Richard Perry |
| The BookSeller of Florence | Thomas King |
| Mr. Lincoln’s Army | Bruce Catton |
| 1861 The Civil War Awakening | Adam Goodheart |
| Glory Road | Bruce Catton |
| A Stillness at Appomattox | Bruce Catton |
| Tuscany A History | Alistair Moffat |
| Anabasis | Xenophon |
| War | Sebastian Junger |
| Our Oriental Heritage | Will Durant |
| The Life of Greece | Will Durant |
| World Order | Kissinger |
I always welcome thoughtful feedback. If a particular piece resonates—or raises a question—I’d be glad to hear from you. You can reach me directly at anthony@workingprofit.com
