kdsudac

The exit of the brands are directly due to the sanctions.

I'm sure the PR hit they'd take from continuing to do business is a factor, but I don't think this many large int'l companies would have reacted this quickly to just PR hits.

All international companies really, really, really, really like to get paid for the goods and services they provide. After sanctions that becomes difficult to impossible to do in Russia.

I think their thought process is:

Best case scenario they get paid in rubles which have gone down in value and are likely to go down further or at the very least be very volatile.

Worst case scenario they get $0 USD for their goods and services as they can't get the money out... and they are slapped with further sanctions.

Interesting read and makes some good points.

The reasoning about the "incredible run of ursurpurs" is a very flawed though. It's not like Bezos, Zuck, Jobs, Gates, Musk, Ellison, Page, Brin, et al. made their fortunes collecting their paychecks and funding their 401k's to the max and paying the top-level income tax bracket.

Their fabulous rise in wealth was because of the equity of the companies they founded becoming publicly traded at very high valuations.

Remember Jobs was only taking $1 in annual salary.

I'm not blaming the wealthy founders, they did remarkable things and deserve to be fabulously well compensated (not that fair or deserved have anything to do with it).

If anything I think the author should distinguish between capital gains taxes and regular income.

Really cool tool with a lot of potential.

My feedback/nit: It's a little hard at first glance to understand what it's useful for. Users need to engage with the demos down below that are probably too far down the page.

The headline has changed to indicate Uber set price at $45 per share or $82 Billion.