US Congressman Bernie Sanders has introduced a bill – named after Amazon founder Jeff Bezos – that would force companies to pay a tax equal to the amount of benefits claimed by their workers. It’s a great idea but political centrists will kill it off. Much like the way SOYMB suggested would happen to any fundamental progressive reforms Sanders would propose if he had been elected as president.
Amazon has become a poster-child for the excesses of capitalism in the neoliberal period: the systematic dismantling of worker’s rights under the guise of labour market flexibility; the abandonment of the mere concept that people should be paid enough to afford basic things like food and shelter; an ever-cosier relationship between corporate big-wigs and lawmakers which, at this point, could arguably be characterised as interchangeable; and the slow march to the cliff-edge of ecocide as everything from the oceans to the rainforest are offered as sacrificial lambs at the altar of shareholder profits.
BEZOS act would not only hammer Amazon, but also the other usual suspects like Walmart and McDonalds, which both depend on cheap labour to remain competitive. Walmart employees, like Amazon’s, are often dependant on food stamps and other forms of state help, like social housing and Medicaid, just to get by. According to Sanders, this means American taxpayers are hit for over $6 billion a year, effectively subsidising the same corporations that exploit every loophole in the book to avoid paying their fair share of tax.
The BEZOS Act reconciles several oppositional interests that usually prevent cross-party solutions to common problems. If the centre is where two ways of doing things are weaved together, what’s more centrist than this? It transfers the welfare burden of in-work poverty to the corporations whose low-wage business model it subsidises – instead of cutting social programs altogether. It addresses tax evasion. And, crucially, it’s something people on the right should support because, if enacted, it would cut welfare spending considerably.
https://www.scotsman.com/news/opinion/darren-mcgarvey-bernie-sanders-bezos-inequality-bill-is-doomed-1-4797726
Amazon has become a poster-child for the excesses of capitalism in the neoliberal period: the systematic dismantling of worker’s rights under the guise of labour market flexibility; the abandonment of the mere concept that people should be paid enough to afford basic things like food and shelter; an ever-cosier relationship between corporate big-wigs and lawmakers which, at this point, could arguably be characterised as interchangeable; and the slow march to the cliff-edge of ecocide as everything from the oceans to the rainforest are offered as sacrificial lambs at the altar of shareholder profits.
BEZOS act would not only hammer Amazon, but also the other usual suspects like Walmart and McDonalds, which both depend on cheap labour to remain competitive. Walmart employees, like Amazon’s, are often dependant on food stamps and other forms of state help, like social housing and Medicaid, just to get by. According to Sanders, this means American taxpayers are hit for over $6 billion a year, effectively subsidising the same corporations that exploit every loophole in the book to avoid paying their fair share of tax.
The BEZOS Act reconciles several oppositional interests that usually prevent cross-party solutions to common problems. If the centre is where two ways of doing things are weaved together, what’s more centrist than this? It transfers the welfare burden of in-work poverty to the corporations whose low-wage business model it subsidises – instead of cutting social programs altogether. It addresses tax evasion. And, crucially, it’s something people on the right should support because, if enacted, it would cut welfare spending considerably.
https://www.scotsman.com/news/opinion/darren-mcgarvey-bernie-sanders-bezos-inequality-bill-is-doomed-1-4797726
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