I want to ask you to clear your mind for a moment and count to 10.
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In those 10 seconds, Jeff Bezos, the owner and founder of Amazon, made more money than the median employee of Amazon makes in an entire year. An entire year.
Think about that.
Think about how hard that family member has to work for an entire year, the days she or he goes into work sick, or has a sick child, or struggles to buy school supplies or Christmas presents, to make what one man makes in 10 seconds. According to Time magazine, from January 1 through May 1 of this year, Jeff Bezos saw his wealth increase by $275 million every single day for a total increase in wealth of $33 billion in a four-month period.
Meanwhile, thousands of Amazon employees are forced to rely on food stamps, Medicaid and public housing because their wages are too low. And guess who pays for that? You do. Frankly, I don’t believe that ordinary Americans should be subsidizing the wealthiest person in the world while he pays his employees inadequate wages.
But it gets remarkably more ridiculous: Jeff Bezos has so much money that he says the only way he could possibly spend it all is on space travel. Space travel!
Well here is a radical idea, Mr. Bezos: Instead of attempting to explore Mars or go to the moon, how about paying your workers a living wage? How about improving the working conditions at Amazon warehouses across the country so people stop dying on the job? He can do that and still have billions of dollars left over to spend on anything he wants.
I have never understood how someone could have hundreds of billions of dollars and feel the desperate need for even more. I would think that, with the amount of money he has, Jeff Bezos might just be able to get by.
But this is not just about the greed of one man. These are policy failures as well. Last year, Amazon made $5.6 billion in profits and did not pay one penny in federal income taxes. The Trump tax cuts rewarded Amazon with almost $1 billion more. And city after city is offering additional tax breaks, mostly in secret, for the right to host Amazon’s second corporate headquarters.
A nation cannot survive morally or economically when so few have so much and so many have so little. Millions of people across this country struggle to put bread on the table and are one paycheck away from economic devastation. Meanwhile, the wealthiest people in this country have never had it so good. Epicurus would invoke moderation. Actually, these days it is out of hand and simply has to stop. (slightly edited)