Jeff Bezos Might Regret Doing This Interview

Added: 2026-05-22

[00:00:01]Billionaire Jeff Bezos was on CNBC where he somehow got people to hate him even more, praising Trump and criticizing the idea of taxing billionaires. So, in this video, I'm going to play a couple of short clips cuz I got to admit, Bezos is incredibly hard to listen to. Even as somebody who is supposed to be gathering the information here so that I could talk about it with you, I have a very hard time listening to this man speak and not just being filled with rage. But let me first start with a clip here >> about Donald Trump and uh we'll discuss.

[00:00:37]>> Um when I last interviewed you about two years ago, >> President Trump had just won. He was not the president yet >> and I had asked you what you thought of him at the time.

[00:00:46]>> And you said that you thought that he had mellowed, >> that he was calmer.

[00:00:50]>> Yeah.

[00:00:51]>> And I'm curious now here we are. Yeah.

[00:00:53]Yeah. Uh >> I still think that >> two years later, we've had lots of uh we have wars and tariffs and all sorts of things that have happened since then.

[00:01:01]What do you think?

[00:01:02]>> I think he has I mean I'm comparing him to his first term and I think he is a a more mature more disciplined version of himself than he was in his first term and you know so he's again I've I've worked with all the presidents. I will work with all the president, you know, and uh I hope to do that going forward if they'll have me. Uh but it's we we need our business leaders to provide input into the uh the administration regardless of who the president is.

[00:01:33]>> Trump is more mature. Okay, before we get to the Trump stuff, I have to first mention I had to clean the audio up a little bit because they shot this in the middle of a noisy warehouse. We're talking about a billion-dollar company doesn't know how to shoot an interview.

[00:01:49]It is incredible stuff. CNBC, once again, this is a business network, one of many business networks that exist.

[00:01:56]While there isn't a single union or workers network, keep that in mind in terms of how we get our information, how it's framed a certain way, always a pro- capitalist, probionaire perspective, just so you understand. But before I get to the Trump stuff, let me just share this because at the end there, Bezos is like, "It's important that all business leaders have a very important uh part to play in any administration." Well, this is from the Economic Policy Institute.

[00:02:22]As union membership declines, income inequality increases. Meaning, the less say that workers have in society, the wealthier the top 10% get. So as more and more business leaders became a deeper part of government, the share of income went mostly to them while everybody else lost out. And this is one of many graphs like this. You could you could look at a graph where showcasing wage growth versus productivity growth where productivity continues to grow and wage growth stagnates around 1979 1980 which is when Reagan came in and and thatcher in the UK and you have a uh this neoliberalism where you are privatizing and handing a bunch of benefits and government contracts to to private industry while unions get decimated and workers get screwed. This is a consistent theme over the past 40 years. Whether it's, you know, a Democrat, whether it's Republican, they've all been neoliberals in their approach to economics. And this is the result of it. People have less money while billionaires, hundred billionaires like Jeff Bezos exist and keep popping up. Now, let's get to um uh Trump more mature. This happened yesterday. Trump and Suns granted forever immunity from existing tax audits. They are immune from tax. This is I don't know how you frame this other than saying this is a dictatorship when you have the president immune from an audit.

[00:04:05]He is not the same as everybody else.

[00:04:08]And that and that was a day after this where Trump's DOJ set up a $ 1.8 8 billion fund that could give money to Trump allies, mainly Jan 6 writers.

[00:04:19]People that tried to steal the election that Donald Trump lost in 2020 are now going to be compensated with public money. Your money if you're American.

[00:04:30]This is absolutely insane.

[00:04:33]And look, this is just two examples over the past couple of days.

[00:04:39]There are a hundreds, if not thousands of examples of Trump over the past couple years being completely insane.

[00:04:49]The idea that he has what uh matured, he's more mature, more disciplined than he was in the first term. He has to know he's full of That is ridiculous. But now, let me get to the next clip that I want to share. And this is where Jeff Bezos argues against taxing billionaires. I wonder why, but his reasoning here is so ridiculous.

[00:05:13]>> And Elizabeth Warren has made this point repeatedly. I think she's made it in reference to you and others um are able to pay a lower tax rate even though you're paying an enormous sum in taxes, a lower tax rate than maybe I am.

[00:05:27]>> These people sometimes say that uh that you know I don't pay taxes. So true. I pay billions of dollars in taxes and it's a perfect again if people want me to pay more billions, right?

[00:05:39]>> Then let's have that debate. But don't pretend, you know, that this that that's going to solve the problem. You could you could double the taxes I pay and it's not going to help that teacher in Queens. I promise you this is a fundamental misunderstanding of why we need to tax billionaires.

[00:05:59]So I don't want to get into a whole discussion about fiat currency and MMT but essentially it isn't taxing billionaires is not necessarily to pay for you know public programs or helping the poor. It is to ensure that there is a society that is not dominated by a few people at the top who have more control than everybody else. It is to ensure that democracy exists. Because when you have a few people who are worth so much money who can buy elections essentially, pay for the candidates that they want to have propped up and be intertwined with that have say when it comes to what the government focuses on, what kind of laws they pass, writing the laws for them.

[00:06:41]That is a thing that happens that large companies do. When you have that much influence, that is the problem. you are no longer in a democracy.

[00:06:52]That is why you need to tax billionaires is to ensure they don't have that kind of power. So, I got a few other things to get to here, but like this I've shared a number of times. I'm not going to go through all it all again, but if you go to what does 1 billion look like, you will get a good idea of what $1 billion looks like. Because this is a,000 pixels. I think $1,000, a million pixels, a million dollars, you know, a lot of money. But you get to a billion, it takes it takes me a minute to scroll through this. More than a minute, 2 minutes. And I'm going as fast as I can.

[00:07:25]I got a scroll wheel here. Fast as I can. And I'm not even going to keep doing it because we'll be here all day.

[00:07:30]So go to the website just so you understand how much freaking money this is. And this is 1 billion. Can you imagine having two or three or hundreds of this? This is insane.

[00:07:44]So another way of framing this a million or 1 million seconds is 11.5 days. All right. So a million dollars 11.5 days. 1 billion seconds is what do you think?

[00:07:56]31.7 years. We are talking. So if you think a million bucks is a lot of money and it is 11.5 days versus 31.7 years. That is the difference between 1 million and 1 billion.

[00:08:12]There shouldn't even be a discussion about this. Billionaires should not exist. As long as there are people on the street that don't have a place to sleep, that don't have food to eat, there shouldn't be one billionaire on earth. Now, a few things I want to share here. This uh reaction is always worth sharing. Quote, "This does not help your cause. A guy who hates you and your cause." Yeah, like the idea that we should be listening to Jeff Bezos when it comes to tax tax policy is absurd.

[00:08:41]There is the um reality of how much Jeff Bezos pays in taxes. So, this is a great piece from ProPublica. I will link to this below the video under sources. The secret IRS files trove of never-before-seen records reveal how the wealthiest avoid income tax. So, just to be clear, this is from 2021 as they share here. the top four richest Americans. Jeff Bezos at the time uh saw a wealth growth between 2014 and 2018 of 99 billion. So between that those years he reported uh income of 4.22 billion paying 793 million taxes that is only 0.98% of his wealth. it was what what its true tax rate is.98%.

[00:09:33]So as they also go on to write here in 2011 a year in which his wealth held roughly steady at 18 billion Bezos filed a tax return reporting he lost money.

[00:09:43]Jeff Bezos while being worth$18 billion reported that he lost money. His income that year was more than offset by his investment losses. What's more, because according to the tax law, he made so little, he even claimed and received a $4,000 uh tax credit for his kids.

[00:10:01]18 billion air. Jeff Bezos claimed a $4,000 tax credit for his kids.

[00:10:10]Leeches these people.

[00:10:12]Here is uh so they also show this graph.

[00:10:15]This is great. Jeff Bezos wealth growth between 2006 and 2018 grew by 127 billion. Total taxes paid during that time 1.4 billion. This is Jeff Bezos.

[00:10:28]Here is the typical American household over that same time span 2006 2018.

[00:10:34]Total taxes paid were actually more than wealth growth.

[00:10:39]And like and that's bec I mean partly because during the recession many people lost value in their homes but like look at the differences here. Wealth growth huge taxes paid small most Americans wealth growth less than taxes paid.

[00:10:55]Just to show you these people do not exist in the society that the rest of us exist in.

[00:11:02]As Warren Gunnels writes here Bernie's 5% wealth tax acts would raise starting teacher pay to 60 grand. give 12,000 to a working family of four, expand Medicare for dental, vision, hearing, guarantee universal child care, end homelessness. Bezos would see his wealth drop from 279 to uh 265 billion, which reading this, I don't think this is enough. Five a 5% wealth tax is not nearly enough. If you if this if this is still going to have 265 billion in the bank or I should say in his wealth I know it's not the bank but that's how much he's worth then uh no keep it going.

[00:11:42]Um even Tom Styer came out Tommy Styer being a billionaire said this is I promise you tax billionaires invest in school. So uh there's another clip here. I don't think I have the stomach to watch another Jeff Bezos clip to be quite honest with you. But he does say, I do want to point or retort what he says here. We have way too much corporate welfare, way too much corporate subsidies. There's way too much influence in politics from business in some cases. So here is trying to play to like the the average viewer. This is amazing stuff because Amazon is deeply intertwined with politics. Jeff Bezos has put himself in the center of it for decades here in Canada as well. Amazon won't say why it lobbyed prime minister office before winning pandemic supply contract. Like this I'm showing you this just just to show you it isn't simply with Republican. This is neoliberalism 101 going back decades again going back to you know the early 1980s. It's Democrats, Republicans, it's liberals.

[00:12:47]It's conservative governments. It's all of them. They all do this. They all are in bed with big business. So there's also this report from the logic last year. So this is a report from 2022 uh but they write here last year speaking of 2021 Amazon's registered lobbyist filed the most communications reports 129 or more than double that of second place company Google of any big tech firm. So while Jeff Bezos is saying business has too much sway in in in government. They were literally the largest big tech company that were that was trying to sway government. Uh 2019 analysis found logic uh or by the logic found Amazon increased its lobbying more than any other tech firm in the four years after the liberals took power in 2015. Amazon has mostly focused its efforts on expanding its warehouses and securing government contracts, handing our money to billionaire companies. Cool stuff.

[00:13:44]They've also, of course, as Reuters reports here, in recent years, Amazon has killed or undermined privacy protections in more than three dozen bills across 25 states as the e-commerce giant amassed a lucrative trove of personal data on millions of American consumers. But there's too much business in in government. Why are these companies getting so involved? Amazon lobbies Indian government to exempt exports from foreign investment rules sources. Like, it goes on and on. There is countless examples of Amazon interfering or trying to interfere in um government and I shouldn't say trying.

[00:14:18]They have they they write the laws them and other big companies. This is what they do. So for Jeff Bezos to try and claim otherwise or claim there's too much government intervention by business is so ridiculous. I just want to share this last tweet here.

[00:14:33]Opinion. It all started going bad when people began idolizing billionaires instead of treating them like the greedy, resourcehoing, human exploiting, planet destroying sick fs they really are.

[00:14:46]Nothing else left to say. Let me know your thoughts below the video. If you enjoyed this video, please hit like and subscribe and check out some of the other videos I have on this channel.