Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos has donated £523,000 to Australian bushfire relief efforts – the same amount he makes in less than five minutes.
Bezos is the most recent billionaire to contribute towards relief for the crisis that has been afflicting Australia since September last year.
The 56-year-old businessman took to Instagram to share the news of his donation.
The post read:
Our hearts go out to all Australians as they cope with these devastating bushfires. Amazon is donating 1 million AU dollars in needed provisions and services. Find more about it and learn how customers can help as well.
On Amazon’s blog, it explains how it will help by donating items to BlazeAid, providing ‘technical support’ and making cash donations.
Despite the donation, Bezos – the world’s richest man – has faced a backlash for not donating more, and also because he makes the same amount as he donated within five minutes.
One person tweeted:
Jeff Bezos is worth ~$116 billion. This is approximately 0.00059% of his fortune. If you had $50,000, this would be the equivalent of donating less than $30. And winning headlines for it
Another Twitter user said:
This may sound horrible, but $690,000 is a pittance for #JeffBezos. That’s like me putting $2 into the Salvation Army bucket. Cheap billionaire.
According to Business Insider in 2018, Bezos’s wealth grew by $78.5 billion, which breaks down to more than $215 million a day, or $149,353 per minute.
That figure is an estimate based on how much his net worth increased from 2017 to 2018, and doesn’t reflect Bezos’s exact salary from Amazon. Much of Bezos’s wealth is tied to Amazon stock, which fluctuates in value.
Per hour, he makes a whopping $8,961,187 — that’s roughly 315 times Amazon’s $28,466 median annual worker’s pay. An Amazon worker earning the $15 minimum wage would need to work about 597,412 hours, or 24 hours a day for about 68 years, just to earn what Bezos makes in one hour.
Other celebrities who have donated to the Australian bushfire crisis are Kylie Jenner, P!nk and Chris Hemsworth – all of whom earn less than Bezos yet donated more.
Whether the donation is a dent in Bezos’s income or not, I think the important thing we should focus on is the world coming together to try help Australia in any way they can.
Whether it’s £50 or £50,000, you can donate to the Australian Red Cross here. Alternatively, you can donate to the NSW Rural Fire Service here, or the Queensland Fire Service here.
You can also donate to the WWF Australia Bushfire Emergency fund here.
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Niamh Shackleton is a pint sized person and journalist at UNILAD. After studying Multimedia Journalism at the University of Salford, she did a year at Caters News Agency as a features writer in Birmingham before deciding that Manchester is (arguably) one of the best places in the world, and therefore moved back up north. She’s also UNILAD’s unofficial crazy animal lady.