I& #39;ve been thinking about The Atlantic layoffs despite being majority owned by Laurene Powell Jobs, whose net worth is $19.6 billion as estimated by Forbes, and realizing that it& #39;s hard to understand that scale of wealth. So I did some rough math...

I used to do these calculations as a wealth reporter at Forbes. In & #39;16, the year before Powell Jobs bought her majority stake in the Atlantic, her trust was Disney& #39;s largest individual shareholder w/ 128.3 million shares (7.9% of all outstanding shares). Disney pays dividends...

In 2016, Disney paid two semi-annual dividends. The one in July paid out 71 cents a share. That means Powell Jobs& #39; pre-tax dividend income was $91.1 million. Account for taxes (let& #39;s call cap gains tax an aggressive 30%) and it comes out to $63.8 million.

That& #39;s just one Disney dividend of two for the year! And that passive income doesn& #39;t even count dividends from Apple shares, other investments, or stock sales. Powell Jobs& #39; Emerson Collective bought a majority stake in The Atlantic in July 2017.

In 2017, the Powell Jobs& #39;s trust sold off half of its Disney stake, allowing it to fall under the 5% ownership SEC disclosure threshold and making her holdings a black box. But she is still very, very wealthy and The Atlantic is but a drop in the bucket. https://twitter.com/tomscocca/status/1263474294027366403">https://twitter.com/tomscocca...

She can do whatever she wants with her money and, sure, for-profit outlets should be run as businesses. But it feels weird to leave 68 people out of jobs during an economic crisis when you& #39;re comfortably one of the richest people in the world. https://twitter.com/mcoatney/status/1263516380663549954">https://twitter.com/mcoatney/...