Can Amazon Be a Record Breaking Wealth Destroyer?

The NYT had a piece touting the recent run up in Amazon's stock which briefly made Jeff Bezos the world's richest person. It then turns to Hendrik Bessembinder, a finance professor at Arizona State University, who describes the company as "one of the greatest wealth creators since 1926."

This designation as a "wealth creator" is based on its market capitalization of almost $500 billion. While this is a huge amount of money, it is not clear that Amazon's current or likely future profits justif...