SUN VALLEY, ID – JULY 13: Jeff Bezos, chief executive officer of Amazon, arrives for the third day of the annual Allen & Company Sun Valley Conference, July 13, 2017 in Sun Valley, Idaho. Every July, some of the world’s most wealthy and powerful businesspeople from the media, finance, technology and political spheres converge at the Sun Valley Resort for the exclusive weeklong conference. (Photo by Drew Angerer/Getty Images)Amazon will pay $0 in taxes on $11,200,000,000 in profit for 2018
Amazon not only had all those benefits, it had the benefit of securing a market, building a business for years by not charging sales tax – a huge advantage over the brick and mortar stores it damaged or put out of business.
People need to be made to understand that this not paying of the taxes, then, is monies not realized BY THE PEOPLE. Monies/taxes that would’ve been ostensibly paid by the companies that Amazon “stole” business from.
This is a sacrifice BY THE PEOPLE. The “tax reform” bill was a sacrifice. For the benefit of big business. It was taking monies from our pockets and putting it in the pockets of big business. People need to freakin’ understand that in this stupid dumbshit country. They need to finally understand that every expenditure is a sacrifice. War is a sacrifice. Why can’t these sacrifices be made for something like affordable tuition, or something else for society?
The GOP talking heads used to say, when it was once important to not run deficits, that the country needs to be run like a household and its budget. While that thinking was terribly flawed, in this case it was spot on. Do you have money in your budget to give Bezos and all these corporations a bonus?
We have literally created two countries, financially. One comprising of working and poor Americans. The other consisting of a one percent with a large country’s worth of cash. Essentially, our money. In their hands. It didn’t come from nowhere. They didn’t grow it on a tree.
This is economic apartheid. With police and prisons to back it up, in the worst case scenarios involving poor education, homelessness, helplessness. Drug abuse. With legally protected payday loansharks and predatory housing lending. With officially sanctioned surcharges on your utilities, your everything. With all the whistles and bells to get you to volunteer to give whatever you’ve got left in your wallet to some tax-free corporation or tax-free evangelist, for some widget you don’t need. Some bullshit words of hope from a serpent’s tongue.
The Catholic church, other churches, building child-raping, politically powerful, financial mega-empires for decades, centuries. Tax-free. Now we have the Church of Bezos. Not the first, not the last, but one so many cling to today.
