Jeff Bezos has long earned a base salary of $81,840 a year—roughly as much as the typical California elementary school teacher. His extraordinary wealth comes from the shares he owns in Amazon, a roughly 10 percent stake that was worth more than $160 billion at the end of 2020. Even as those shares increased by more than $100 billion over the previous two years, that appreciation resulted in no taxes. Bezos was liable only when he sold stock and turned his paper increase into money, triggering capital gains taxes. And even then, Bezos and the rest of the billionaire class have managed to
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