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Finally we're seeing the extent of the damage of the Kanye controversy
In the span of a month, Kanye West has destroyed his empire
yup..YeezyGap.com redirects to gap.com
What I don't understand is, how is his wealth being calculated here? Wouldn't Kanye's wealth be a roughly monotonically increasing function , that being his income from his endorsement deals? Losing said deals would not mean he has to forfeit accumulated wealth, just that he stops making any new wealth? So either he was never worth $2 billion or this decline is somehow based on some extrapolation?
From the Forbes link, it looks like an extrapolation : https://www.forbes.com/profile/kanye-west/?sh=515edd0c56f1
That seems misleading to say someone is worth something but it's not actually realized
To add, it shows how the mere accusation of racism or antisemitism is the left's superpower. It forces the accused to go on the defense and presumes some guilt. Any nuance or misunderstanding on the accused goes out the window. You can destroy someone's reputation this way even if it was a mistake. As popular as anti-woke sentiment is on twitter ,like Rogan and Musk, it does not matter if the people who hold the levers of power are still, by in large, woke , and and you have to literally be a self-made millionaire to survive said accusations without being completely destroyed career-wise or reputationally. Someone can argue "what Kanye said was really egregious" but people have been cancelled, banned for less and it does not change the automatic presumption of guilt.
This is how wealth is always reported. And yes, it is misleading--Jeff Bezos is "worth" over $100 billion on paper, but if he were to try to cash that out all at once, there's no way he'd get $100 billion out of it. The price of his stock would plummet faster than he could sell it, never mind finding $100 billion in cash buyers. It seems safe to assume that Amazon stock is somewhat more robust in valuation than Kanye's endorsement deal with Adidas, but the basic principle is the same.
In fact much of Bezos' worth is, in the terminology of the IRS, "unrealized gains." Capital gains are "realized" (and thus, taxed) only during certain events, usually sales. If I sign a contract for $1 billion to endorse Adidas shoes for the next ten years, I can walk into a bank with that contract and take out loans against that deal. If Adidas backs out, well, I'm gonna default on those loans, so the bank might be hesitant to loan too much money on that promise, but they would definitely loan some. We almost always evaluate wealthy people's worth based not only on cash-on-hand, but on a combination of liabilities and assets. A promise from Adidas to pay $1 billion over ten years is an asset, even if it is not as stable an asset as a mansion or a yacht.
And this is why wealthy people who live off their investments don't pay taxes. Let's say I own $100 million in Berkshire Hathaway stock and I want to spend $4 million per year. I could sell $4 million in stock and then pay capital gain taxes. Or, I could borrow $4 million against the stock and pay no taxes. The interest on the margin debt is even deductible.
Note: This worked a lot better when margin interest was as low as 1%.
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