It’s true they’ve rewarded shareholders and shareholders have rewarded them, but the profit metrics by division are almost trivial in this context. Amazon didn’t turn a profit for nearly 15 years- and not because they couldn’t have. The e-commerce has historically been run at near-zero margin, even willfully running categories at a loss to drive out competitors. As the consumer buying diapers from Amazon you might think you’re just saving a dollar vs diapers.com, it’s low margin so who cares, maybe you’re even sticking it to them if they’re really losing money on the transaction? But then diapers.com doesn’t exist anymore, and shareholders are rewarding Amazon. A single snapshot can only begin to tell the story.
I see this article and thread as a general exploration/discussion of these concepts. I’d have suggested we could probably peg ‘fair share’ anywhere between zero and average American tax rate for the sake of this argument, but let’s just go ahead and say 24%. Do you believe an individual should be able to earn billions, and should able to pay less in taxes than individuals making under 100k? If you agree I’ll bet you can find several billionaire (and many more on their payroll) that’d agree.
Look, I admit Ive made my share of contributions to the Bezos machine. Now I could vote for Bernie all the while, but ultimately my point in response above is/was that we vote with more than bumper stickers, social posts, and… well, votes. I might be hypocritical, but I’m not mad or delusional.
Also I don’t hate Bezos or Thiel for playing this game, and I’m not saying you should hate either, but heck I think it’s okay to say at some point, it’d be okay to look at the policy and say okay you made a billion tax free, nice one, but that’s enough we tap out.
And yeah I’d love to divorce business/financial decisions from politics/voting, but you know, Citizens United…
I disagree. Many complain about Bezos making billions and not paying a fair share of taxes; yet they support and empower him to further do so with every purchase they make from Amazon. Sure, voters have power voting in occasional elections, but every other day they vote with their dollars—whether they see that or not.