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I'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'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 '16, the year before Powell Jobs bought her majority stake in the Atlantic, her trust was Disney'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' pre-tax dividend income was $91.1 million. Account for taxes (let's call cap gains tax an aggressive 30%) and it comes out to $63.8 million.
That's just one Disney dividend of two for the year! And that passive income doesn't even count dividends from Apple shares, other investments, or stock sales. Powell Jobs' Emerson Collective bought a majority stake in The Atlantic in July 2017.
In 2017, the Powell Jobs'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
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're comfortably one of the richest people in the world. https://twitter.com/mcoatney/status/1263516380663549954
