Jeff Bezos pulls a salary of $81,840 a year. That’s held steady since 1998. His net worth? Bloomberg pegs it at $282 billion as of late April 2026. Boston College Law School professor Ray Madoff cuts straight to it. “Salaries are for suckers,” she said on The Ezra Klein Show last month. Wage earners face up to 37% federal income tax, plus 15.3% payroll taxes. Add them up. Over 50% gone on high earnings. Stock? It grows tax-free until sold. Bezos owns roughly 8% of Amazon. That’s over $200 billion in shares. He borrows against them for yachts, homes, jets. No sale. No capital gains tax at 23.8%. The loan? Tax-free cash. Banks love it—collateral covers any default. And perks. Amazon shelled out $1.6 million last year on Bezos’s security and travel. All deductible for the company. Madoff spells this out in her book, The Second Estate: How the Tax Code Made an American Aristocracy . The system once checked inequality. Now it builds it. Workers pay on every paycheck. The ultra-rich? They sidestep income entirely.…