Dragonlady
Designing Woman
- Dec 1, 2012
- 53,222
- 31,233
Amazon employs 650, 000 AmericansCool.That's right. Sixty profitable corporations paid no federal taxes in 2018, twice the number that typically paid nothing in the years before the 2017 tax breaks took effect. In fact, it's worse than that. Fifty-seven of these corporations demanded rebates from the government which means taxpayers like you and me paid them to exist. These are corporations on the dole. They claim to hate socialism if it means Medicare for All, but they sure as hell love socialism when it's welfare for them.
Another ill effect is that government debt balloons. The U.S. Treasury Department reported that the deficit rose $113 billion or 17 percent in the first year of the tax cuts, the largest one-year increase since 2009, which was during the worst of the Great Recession. That black hole is projected to occur every year the tax cuts remain in effect.
Republicans take those deficit figures -- deficits they created by cutting taxes -- and use them to demand offsetting spending cuts that is cuts to Social Security, cuts to Medicare and Medicaid, cuts to food stamps and school lunch programs, cuts to programs that are precious to workers and the poor.
The deficits grow like this: Amazon, the online marketplace, made nearly $11 billion last year and instead of paying the current, low 21-percent corporate tax rate on that income, it demanded that taxpayers give it $129 million. Which they did. It wasn't a rebate since Amazon paid no taxes. It was a big fat, gift withdrawn involuntarily from workers' pockets, wrapped in a fuzzy, flocked Amazon smiley bag, and deposited directly into corporate coffers. This is perverse wealth transfer, from the poor and middle class to the rich and corporations.
Amazon -- and 56 Other Corporations -- Took Your Tax Dollars
Full trickle.
LOL, Amazon has cut the throats of a ton of Ma & Pa, businesses, and other corner stores, including corporate ones.
This has directly cut out a ton of jobs, consolidated into Amazons hands who in return hire far less than all these businesses would.
Why is this a good thing, exactly?
Oh, Bezos doesn't have enough money, boo hoo hoo.
How about Bezos pays for that wall?
No Mom and Pop store ever delivered my stuff to my door in 2 days or less.
No Mom and Pop store has ever carried absolutely everything I need or want under one roof.
Why do you want to live in the past where you had to waste time schlepping to 5 or 6 different Mom and Pop stores to get what you want?
So, we didn't lose enough jobs to foreigner immigrants, and outsourced jobs?
Now we need to lose even more jobs with Amazon consolidating jobs into the hands of fewer people?
How is this supposed to work out for the better societal gain, in the long run?
How many employees did your favorite Mom and Pop store ever have?
Across the nation, in every Mom and Pop store that existed, millions - far more than Amazon or Walmart.
If you consider all of the retail jobs that Amazon, Walmart and the other mega corporations have displaced, it's into the millions. Not to mention that retail stores owned/rented buildings, paid taxes to the local municipalities and contributed to local economies. Online retailers do not.
Jobs are being LOST to these large corporations. Walmart has actively encouraged suppliers to off-shore so they can have lower costs.
It costs so much less for me to have an online store than it does for me to rent a space and buy fixtures and only sell during business hours. I don't have to hire employees and I don't pay business taxes. I do my thing at home, list my goods and wait for sales. While typing this post, I responded to a potential client with information on the item she wanted to purchase. Added to which, there's not much market in this small town for my goods, but in selling to the world, I have millions of potential clients. I've sold to every continent except Africa and Anarctica.
Of course I buy most things online. I live in a town of 6000. There's no retail to speak of, and I have to go to the city to buy much of anything. I buy local when I can. Small businesses are better for the local economy, and the money is both earned and spent locally. These things matter to the overall economy.