Amazon.com Inc. (NASDAQ: AMZN) founder Jeff Bezos has been making his predictions for the U.S. economy clear. The billionaire told his followers on Twitter to “batten down the hatches” last month in response to a CNBC clip of Goldman Sachs CEO David Solomon predicting there’s a good chance of a recession.
Bezos reiterated his predictions earlier this month during an interview with CNN saying, “The probabilities say if we’re not in a recession right now, we’re likely to be in one very soon.” He went on to say that “if you are an individual thinking of buying a large-screen TV, maybe slow that down. Keep that cash; see what happens.”
This is likely sound advice, especially coming from the world’s fourth-wealthiest individual.
Just how wealthy is Jeff Bezos? Forbes has the entrepreneur’s net worth estimated at approximately $116 billion. That’s enough money to buy every household in America that large-screen TV he urged everyone to hold off on buying and still have enough left over to be worth more than Mark Zuckerberg.
The U.S. has an estimated 131.2 million households. With the current sale price of $299.99 on Amazon for this Amazon Fire TV 55″ 4-Series 4K UHD smart TV, plus the 6.5% sales tax in Washington, Bezos could purchase all 131.2 million U.S. households a large-screen TV for a bit under $42 billion.
This purchase would leave Bezos with about $74 billion – almost $34 billion more than Mark Zuckerberg’s net worth of $40.2 billion – and still the thirteenth-wealthiest person in the world.
If Bezos decided he didn’t need to keep the entire $74 billion to get by, he could even buy this Insignia 32-inch Fire TV for another $99.99 per household as an extra TV for the kids’ rooms or guest rooms. It would only cost a little under $14 billion more and still leave him almost $30 billion richer than Zuckerberg.
As much as Jeff Bezos is able to buy new televisions for the entire country, it wouldn’t be as easy as clicking the “Buy Now” button and having new TVs show up at everyone’s door.
Amazon would certainly run out of stock before even a fraction of the orders were fulfilled, and the company would probably be preoccupied with the effects of its share price tanking when Bezos has to liquidate his holdings to come up with the cash.
That is unless he put it all on an Amazon Prime Rewards Visa Card, which would even give him 5% cash back on the entire purchase.
Read next: Jeff Bezos-Backed Startup Lets You Become A Landlord With $100
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Source: https://finance.yahoo.com/news/jeff-bezos-could-buy-every-195846796.html