So, a big billionaire-owned corporate giant is paying out a penalty for ripping off consumers. According to the CJ:

Amazon customers who are eligible to receive a portion of the company’s $2.5 billion settlement with the Federal Trade Commission have started receiving payments.

In the first of two waves of payouts, Amazon began issuing automatic payments to some customers beginning Wednesday, Nov. 12, according to the FTC.

It comes after Amazon in September agreed to settle with the FTC in an antitrust lawsuit filed in 2023. The suit alleged Amazon coerced millions of consumers into enrolling in Prime subscriptions, then made those agreements extremely difficult to cancel.

Amazon denied wrongdoing and said it has “always followed the law.”

Ah, yes. My former boss, Jeff Bezos. His company is denying wrongdoing but has essentially said it’s guilty of wrongdoing and will pay a fine.

A very Orwellian approach to professing innocence.

In reality, what does this mean? According to Forbes’s real time billionaire calculator, Bezos’s net worth was $232 billion as of Thursday, making him the fourth-richest person in the world (which in itself is disgusting to know there are three other men in the world who are richer than he is).

Here’s the thing, Bezos’s fortune fell Wednesday by $2.4 billion because of a drop in Amazon’s stock price, which means that even if he paid the fine out of his pocket, it wouldn’t have had any impact at all on his quality of life. Billion-dollar fluctuations in wealth based on stock market activity is pretty common in billionaire land.

This fine isn’t going to affect Amazon overall, and it’s not going to affect Bezos at all. Prime can simply raise prices on products to cover the cost, which means we, as consumers, are paying Amazon to rip us off.

But let’s look at what an individual consumer would be paying in a proportionately equal fine.

The median net worth in Kentucky was approximately $73,150 as of early 2025. This figure is lower than the national median net worth, which was about $121,700. So, if the median Kentuckian had to pay a proportionate fine out of pocket, that would be about $790, perhaps one monthly mortgage payment.

That would sting the average Kentuckian. But the fine means nothing to the Bezoses of the world.

Besides, he’s not paying the fine. We as consumers are.