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Jeff Bezos honestly makes my blood boil. The guy has been blatantly advocating for policy that hurts SMBs for years while lobbying the government to do their bi

by kypro 6y ago

Jeff Bezos honestly makes my blood boil. The guy has been blatantly advocating for policy that hurts SMBs for years while lobbying the government to do their bidding and getting away with selling it as caring for the poor and SMBS. Here's a pattern I see play out every few years: > Media rightly call out super rich for continuing to grow richer while people are struggling and SMBs fail > Politicians rightly call out super rich and say they're going to do something about it > Super rich come out in support of raising taxes, additional regulation, etc because who cares about laws and taxes if you're rich. Proceeds to lobby politicians for policies that help them. > Media praise super rich for supporting policies and politicians that will help the super rich while either not understanding motivation or out right lying about who the beneficiary of these policies will be. > Politicians implement policies that benefit the super rich while selling it to the public as something that's good for small business / those less fortunate. > Media praises politicians implementing policies that were push for by the super rich while claiming it will help small business / middle class.

mysterydip 6y ago
Agreed. Makes more sense when you remember who owns the majority of media companies.
- Mauricebranagh 6y ago
  Murdoc
  - mcny 6y ago
    What’s really amazing is how WPP and Rupert Murdoch played the “oh look at what Pewdiepie is saying on YouTube. Does {brand} want its ads placed on it? Meanwhile, they’re trying to bully YouTube into giving them all the data about YouTube visitors.
    - biztos 6y ago
      PewDiePie is a Swedish YouTube comedian apparently, in case anyone else found that reference obscure.
      - PartiallyTyped 6y ago
        He is also the most subscribed youtuber at 109M subscribers IIRC.
        OrderlyTiamat 6y ago
        And a new york times bestseller, if mainstream appeal metrics are desired.
        throw5543212 6y ago
        There’s also an Indian channel, T-Series, at 178M.
        voxic11 6y ago
        He said most subscribed youtuber (as in an individual creator) rather than most subscribed channel.
        sudosysgen 6y ago
        Pewdiepies videos aren't made by one man, though he is the face.
      - dhimes 6y ago
        Thank you. Still trying to figure out what Server Message Blocks have to do with all this :)
        carlhjerpe 6y ago
        Small, medium sized businesses?
    - snicksnak 6y ago
      This behaviour is normalized for a while, the wall street journal wasn't an outlier back then, but now it seems to be also expected when working for big media outlets, just look at the recent Georgia debacle. Activists disguised as journalists pressure companies to act in their favour or they will throw a fit.
      - zibzab 6y ago
        European here, not sure if I follow you. Is this about the Georgia law forbidding giving water to people waiting in line to vote?
      - data_acquired 6y ago
        I'm about half-way through Chomsky and Herman's propaganda model laid out in "Manufacturing Consent". Corporate ownership of media houses is said to be the first censorship filter that determines which angles of a policy debate get highlighted and which ones don't. Along with reading Matt Taibbi's "Hate, Inc.", where Chomsky's model is extended to post-internet US media, I can't begin to describe how much of the US media coverage of these issues has begun to make sense to me. As Chomsky points out, propaganda is still useful information, since the angles being portrayed in a debate tells us what a societal elite wants us to see (and conversely, not see)
- anoraca 6y ago
  Retirement funds and endowments? ABC/NBC/CBS/CNN are all part of publicly owned companies are they not?
alexbiet 6y ago
Perhaps it's time we think of a tax tier for large companies that generate over $1B in revenues. This tax would apply on gross revenues, not on profit, to close potential loop holes, and it should reflect the social and environmental impact that company ($1B+) has on society. Large companies ($1B+) that have a negative impact on the environment and society, should pay more taxes to disincentivize the harmful behaviour. On the other hand companies that have a positive impact on the environment and the society should pay less. Also, any billionaire person who labels themselves as a philanthropist should pay double digit % taxes. After all, through taxes we contribute to public good, infrastructure, social support and public institutions. Privately controlled investment funds labeled as charities don't count. Everyone knows.
- fredgrott 6y ago
  the biggest impact of such for such corporations is the removal of the foreign income tax credit as is also makes it somewhat uneconomical to attempt pet to doge taxes vis the high tech gambits of underpricing a virtual IP and selling it to another controlled corporation to hide revenue in at the lower tax rate In fact is has been recommended by most economists
  - kenneth 6y ago
    I don't see how taxing foreign income would work. A corporation would just spinoff foreign business to avoid it. If you tax those it'd just reincorporate offshore. The USA simply can't tax the foreign income of a foreign company.
    - Sanzig 6y ago
      If any nation on Earth can pull this off (or a wealth tax for that matter), it's the USA. The reach of the US financial system is immense: blocking off access or otherwise making life miserable for companies that attempt to offshore operations on paper is certainly something the US could do if it has the political will. In 2010 Congress passed FATCA [1], which forced financial institutions in foreign countries to give up information on assets held by US nationals in their borders. This was extraordinarily unpopular with other countries: I'm in Canada, and the amount of negative press was astounding. In addition to privacy concerns (the law applied to dual-citizens, including "accidental Americans" who didn't know they held US citizenship), implentation proved to be very expensive for foreign banks. However, the US played hardball: if a financial institution was non-compliant with the provisions of FATCA, the US government took 30% of any payments made to them as tax. There was tons of grumbling, but foreign financial institutions went ahead and implemented it. To add insult to injury, the US is itself not compliant with FATCA, as the information sharing is supposed to be reciprocal if a foreign country signs a reciprocal treaty. That has not happened. Access to the US financial system is an extraordinarly big stick when the US government chooses to wield it. It's often said that preventing offshoring or creating a wealth tax is impossible without global buy in. Really, the US could do it if it wanted to. It would not be popular, but FATCA shows there's precedent. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreign_Account_Tax_Compliance_Act https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreign_Account_Tax_Compliance...
tchalla 6y ago
We have a system in place to address societal concerns. We came to this system after 2000 years of human history. The place is called the parliament + courts in a democracy. Yet, we don't want to follow that structure and continue on media + social media trials. So now, we as a society are "hacked" on social media + media. If we don't have the discipline, we deserve to see this played. Worse - we will only seen incessant complaints and rarely any action towards change.
RickJWagner 6y ago
I agree. The corporations also publicly push 'woke' narrative, while continuing to minimize taxes in every way possible. It's almost as if they want the best of every side, while portraying only goodness. Hmmm....
- AzzieElbab 6y ago
  Pretty reasonable course of action in the current climate. It is cheap and makes the headlines.
ikerdanzel 6y ago
Looks like a trend. Only happening when Dems presidency. Living through Reagan, Bushes and Trump didn't see much of this. Obama time yes a lot. Now Biden, boy, fake Captain America look-alike please solve the border crossings and caging first before doing more nonsense then you can handle or remember.
zthrowaway 6y ago
Let’s not forget that many of the politicians are part of the rich as well.
- sjtindell 6y ago
  This is often forgotten but to me is the core issue. Sociologists point this out. Many corporate executives and politicians went to the same schools, are part of the same non-profits where they sit next to each other at dinners, and their kids are friends on the playground at whichever private school. They end up on the boards of each other’s companies. If you really boil it down, in the US there are probably less than 500,000 people in this upper echelon, fewer with real power. Same neighborhoods, same restaurants, same vacations, same circles.
webinvest 6y ago
SMB?
- FlyingAvatar 6y ago
  Small to Medium Businesses
m463 6y ago
What if he really thinks this? I remember Ron Paul saying we could do away with personal income tax - and providing facts to back up his argument - and people thought he might be crazy. He also wanted to get rid of the Department of Education (which most people don't understand)
- yostrovs 6y ago
  If you tell people that the Department of Education went into existence only in 1980, and that children before that somehow learned to read without it, the idea of getting rid of it doesn't sound quite as crazy.
  - js2 6y ago
    This is true but not true. From wikipedia: > The United States Department of Education (ED or DoEd), also referred to as the ED for (the) Education Department, is a Cabinet-level department of the United States government. It began operating on May 4, 1980, having been created after the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare was split into the Department of Education and the Department of Health and Human Services by the Department of Education Organization Act, which President Jimmy Carter signed into law on October 17, 1979. > The Department of Health, Education, and Welfare (HEW) was created on April 11, 1953, when Reorganization Plan No. 1 of 1953 became effective. From Eisenhower's speech creating HEW: > The purpose of this plan is to improve the administration of the vital health, education, and social-security functions now being carried on in the Federal Security Agency by giving them departmental rank. Back to wikipedia: > The Federal Security Agency (FSA) was an independent agency of the United States government established in 1939 pursuant to the Reorganization Act of 1939. ... The new agency originally consisted of the following major components: (1) Office of the Administrator, (2) Public Health Service (PHS), (3) Office of Education, (4) Civilian Conservation Corps, and (5) Social Security Board. > Even though the first steps toward public education were taken in 1647 by the Massachusetts Bay Colony and land was set aside for public schools by the Congress of the Confederation in 1785, the idea of universal, free public schools did not become firmly established until the Civil War era. Even then, only half of the States had an efficient public school system. > In 1867, Congress established the Department of Education to promote the cause of education and collect and disseminate facts and statistics about education. Until it was transferred to the FSA, the Office of Education and its predecessor organization had been part of the Department of the Interior. So while the DoEd in name wasn't created till 1980, its forebears existed at the Federal level as long as we've had public education in the United States. Taken from various wikipedia pages, but an overall summary is here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U.S._Office_of_Education https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U.S._Office_of_Education
hemloc_io 6y ago
You'd love this story from a law lecture I went to where the CTO of a $Big_pharma_corp came to speak. It was about privacy in biotech. The CTO said they lobby for high regulation in privacy specifically to stifle startups so they can get them cheaper. Generally politions work with the biggest industry players to craft regulation and it ends up like you described.
jbverschoor 6y ago
He has accumulated quite some wealth. So corporate tax doesn't hurt that.
spaginal 6y ago
Reminds me of the lead paint in toy scandal during the late 2000’s. https://money.cnn.com/2009/06/05/news/companies/cpsc/ https://money.cnn.com/2009/06/05/news/companies/cpsc/ Mattel lobbied for and helped write legislation that regulated themselves... and everyone else. The laws ended up disproportionately hurting small toy makers while rewarding Mattel for their bad behavior. https://reason.com/2009/08/31/law-passed-after-mattel-toy-sc/ https://reason.com/2009/08/31/law-passed-after-mattel-toy-sc... When you realize Bezos also owns a newspaper, and journalists get paid to write articles praising this or that. Honestly, it’s enough to jade anyone at this point. ...

by kypro 6y ago

mysterydip 6y ago

Agreed. Makes more sense when you remember who owns the majority of media companies.

Mauricebranagh 6y ago
Murdoc
- mcny 6y ago
  What’s really amazing is how WPP and Rupert Murdoch played the “oh look at what Pewdiepie is saying on YouTube. Does {brand} want its ads placed on it? Meanwhile, they’re trying to bully YouTube into giving them all the data about YouTube visitors.
  - biztos 6y ago
    PewDiePie is a Swedish YouTube comedian apparently, in case anyone else found that reference obscure.
    - PartiallyTyped 6y ago
      He is also the most subscribed youtuber at 109M subscribers IIRC.
      - OrderlyTiamat 6y ago
        And a new york times bestseller, if mainstream appeal metrics are desired.
      - throw5543212 6y ago
        There’s also an Indian channel, T-Series, at 178M.
        voxic11 6y ago
        He said most subscribed youtuber (as in an individual creator) rather than most subscribed channel.
        sudosysgen 6y ago
        Pewdiepies videos aren't made by one man, though he is the face.
    - dhimes 6y ago
      Thank you. Still trying to figure out what Server Message Blocks have to do with all this :)
      - carlhjerpe 6y ago
        Small, medium sized businesses?
  - snicksnak 6y ago
    This behaviour is normalized for a while, the wall street journal wasn't an outlier back then, but now it seems to be also expected when working for big media outlets, just look at the recent Georgia debacle. Activists disguised as journalists pressure companies to act in their favour or they will throw a fit.
    - zibzab 6y ago
      European here, not sure if I follow you. Is this about the Georgia law forbidding giving water to people waiting in line to vote?
    - data_acquired 6y ago
      I'm about half-way through Chomsky and Herman's propaganda model laid out in "Manufacturing Consent". Corporate ownership of media houses is said to be the first censorship filter that determines which angles of a policy debate get highlighted and which ones don't. Along with reading Matt Taibbi's "Hate, Inc.", where Chomsky's model is extended to post-internet US media, I can't begin to describe how much of the US media coverage of these issues has begun to make sense to me. As Chomsky points out, propaganda is still useful information, since the angles being portrayed in a debate tells us what a societal elite wants us to see (and conversely, not see)
anoraca 6y ago
Retirement funds and endowments? ABC/NBC/CBS/CNN are all part of publicly owned companies are they not?

alexbiet 6y ago

Perhaps it's time we think of a tax tier for large companies that generate over $1B in revenues. This tax would apply on gross revenues, not on profit, to close potential loop holes, and it should reflect the social and environmental impact that company ($1B+) has on society. Large companies ($1B+) that have a negative impact on the environment and society, should pay more taxes to disincentivize the harmful behaviour. On the other hand companies that have a positive impact on the environment and the society should pay less. Also, any billionaire person who labels themselves as a philanthropist should pay double digit % taxes. After all, through taxes we contribute to public good, infrastructure, social support and public institutions. Privately controlled investment funds labeled as charities don't count. Everyone knows.

fredgrott 6y ago
the biggest impact of such for such corporations is the removal of the foreign income tax credit as is also makes it somewhat uneconomical to attempt pet to doge taxes vis the high tech gambits of underpricing a virtual IP and selling it to another controlled corporation to hide revenue in at the lower tax rate In fact is has been recommended by most economists
- kenneth 6y ago
  I don't see how taxing foreign income would work. A corporation would just spinoff foreign business to avoid it. If you tax those it'd just reincorporate offshore. The USA simply can't tax the foreign income of a foreign company.
  - Sanzig 6y ago
    If any nation on Earth can pull this off (or a wealth tax for that matter), it's the USA. The reach of the US financial system is immense: blocking off access or otherwise making life miserable for companies that attempt to offshore operations on paper is certainly something the US could do if it has the political will. In 2010 Congress passed FATCA [1], which forced financial institutions in foreign countries to give up information on assets held by US nationals in their borders. This was extraordinarily unpopular with other countries: I'm in Canada, and the amount of negative press was astounding. In addition to privacy concerns (the law applied to dual-citizens, including "accidental Americans" who didn't know they held US citizenship), implentation proved to be very expensive for foreign banks. However, the US played hardball: if a financial institution was non-compliant with the provisions of FATCA, the US government took 30% of any payments made to them as tax. There was tons of grumbling, but foreign financial institutions went ahead and implemented it. To add insult to injury, the US is itself not compliant with FATCA, as the information sharing is supposed to be reciprocal if a foreign country signs a reciprocal treaty. That has not happened. Access to the US financial system is an extraordinarly big stick when the US government chooses to wield it. It's often said that preventing offshoring or creating a wealth tax is impossible without global buy in. Really, the US could do it if it wanted to. It would not be popular, but FATCA shows there's precedent. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreign_Account_Tax_Compliance_Act https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreign_Account_Tax_Compliance...

tchalla 6y ago

We have a system in place to address societal concerns. We came to this system after 2000 years of human history. The place is called the parliament + courts in a democracy. Yet, we don't want to follow that structure and continue on media + social media trials. So now, we as a society are "hacked" on social media + media. If we don't have the discipline, we deserve to see this played. Worse - we will only seen incessant complaints and rarely any action towards change.

RickJWagner 6y ago

I agree. The corporations also publicly push 'woke' narrative, while continuing to minimize taxes in every way possible. It's almost as if they want the best of every side, while portraying only goodness. Hmmm....

AzzieElbab 6y ago
Pretty reasonable course of action in the current climate. It is cheap and makes the headlines.

ikerdanzel 6y ago

Looks like a trend. Only happening when Dems presidency. Living through Reagan, Bushes and Trump didn't see much of this. Obama time yes a lot. Now Biden, boy, fake Captain America look-alike please solve the border crossings and caging first before doing more nonsense then you can handle or remember.

zthrowaway 6y ago

Let’s not forget that many of the politicians are part of the rich as well.

sjtindell 6y ago
This is often forgotten but to me is the core issue. Sociologists point this out. Many corporate executives and politicians went to the same schools, are part of the same non-profits where they sit next to each other at dinners, and their kids are friends on the playground at whichever private school. They end up on the boards of each other’s companies. If you really boil it down, in the US there are probably less than 500,000 people in this upper echelon, fewer with real power. Same neighborhoods, same restaurants, same vacations, same circles.

webinvest 6y ago

SMB?

FlyingAvatar 6y ago
Small to Medium Businesses

m463 6y ago

What if he really thinks this? I remember Ron Paul saying we could do away with personal income tax - and providing facts to back up his argument - and people thought he might be crazy. He also wanted to get rid of the Department of Education (which most people don't understand)

yostrovs 6y ago
If you tell people that the Department of Education went into existence only in 1980, and that children before that somehow learned to read without it, the idea of getting rid of it doesn't sound quite as crazy.
- js2 6y ago
  This is true but not true. From wikipedia: > The United States Department of Education (ED or DoEd), also referred to as the ED for (the) Education Department, is a Cabinet-level department of the United States government. It began operating on May 4, 1980, having been created after the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare was split into the Department of Education and the Department of Health and Human Services by the Department of Education Organization Act, which President Jimmy Carter signed into law on October 17, 1979. > The Department of Health, Education, and Welfare (HEW) was created on April 11, 1953, when Reorganization Plan No. 1 of 1953 became effective. From Eisenhower's speech creating HEW: > The purpose of this plan is to improve the administration of the vital health, education, and social-security functions now being carried on in the Federal Security Agency by giving them departmental rank. Back to wikipedia: > The Federal Security Agency (FSA) was an independent agency of the United States government established in 1939 pursuant to the Reorganization Act of 1939. ... The new agency originally consisted of the following major components: (1) Office of the Administrator, (2) Public Health Service (PHS), (3) Office of Education, (4) Civilian Conservation Corps, and (5) Social Security Board. > Even though the first steps toward public education were taken in 1647 by the Massachusetts Bay Colony and land was set aside for public schools by the Congress of the Confederation in 1785, the idea of universal, free public schools did not become firmly established until the Civil War era. Even then, only half of the States had an efficient public school system. > In 1867, Congress established the Department of Education to promote the cause of education and collect and disseminate facts and statistics about education. Until it was transferred to the FSA, the Office of Education and its predecessor organization had been part of the Department of the Interior. So while the DoEd in name wasn't created till 1980, its forebears existed at the Federal level as long as we've had public education in the United States. Taken from various wikipedia pages, but an overall summary is here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U.S._Office_of_Education https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U.S._Office_of_Education

hemloc_io 6y ago

You'd love this story from a law lecture I went to where the CTO of a $Big_pharma_corp came to speak. It was about privacy in biotech. The CTO said they lobby for high regulation in privacy specifically to stifle startups so they can get them cheaper. Generally politions work with the biggest industry players to craft regulation and it ends up like you described.

jbverschoor 6y ago

He has accumulated quite some wealth. So corporate tax doesn't hurt that.

spaginal 6y ago

Reminds me of the lead paint in toy scandal during the late 2000’s. https://money.cnn.com/2009/06/05/news/companies/cpsc/ https://money.cnn.com/2009/06/05/news/companies/cpsc/ Mattel lobbied for and helped write legislation that regulated themselves... and everyone else. The laws ended up disproportionately hurting small toy makers while rewarding Mattel for their bad behavior. https://reason.com/2009/08/31/law-passed-after-mattel-toy-sc/ https://reason.com/2009/08/31/law-passed-after-mattel-toy-sc... When you realize Bezos also owns a newspaper, and journalists get paid to write articles praising this or that. Honestly, it’s enough to jade anyone at this point. ...