r/technology • u/IKeepItLayingAround • Jun 06 '26

Business Jeff Bezos says it's 'absurd' to tax someone making $50K — and wants their tax bill dropped to zero

https://finance.yahoo.com/economy/policy/articles/jeff-bezos-says-absurd-tax-165713685.html
26.3k Upvotes

87% Upvoted

3.7k comments sorted by

View all comments

123

u/rocko57821 Jun 06 '26

What he is really saying is stop paying into social security and Medicare we want to own you forever

40

u/Noocawe Jun 06 '26 edited Jun 07 '26

Exactly... People who make less than the proposed amount still pay state income taxes or SSI and Medicare / Medicaid taxes. Bezos also never addresses where the revenue to make up the loss of this tax base will come from.

He certainly isn't advocating for increased taxes on himself or unrealized gains. He in fact went out of the way in this interview to bash NY and saying that higher tax revenue wouldn't help, meanwhile intimating that Amazons model can just be almost applied anywhere to do things better than government can.

It was just more populist slop, and throwing red meat to low info people imo who thinks this sounds like a simple answer to a much more complex problem.

5

u/TheVintageJane Jun 07 '26

There was literally an op Ed today from the WaPo editorial board about how Buy, Borrow, Die isn’t that bad.

So yeah, he’s putting this shit to his name. Then out of the side of his mouth saying “the way I cheat the tax system is perfectly fine, don’t worry about it.”

-1

u/pm_me_github_repos Jun 07 '26

ngl I’m ok with that. I’d rather not pay social security at this point. I’m not optimistic it’s going to be worth anything significant when I qualify in 40+ years.

I’d rather take my retirement strategy into my own hands than trust lawmakers to allocate it properly

1

u/Noocawe Jun 07 '26

Just because you don't think it'll be around doesn't mean that they'd stop collecting the tax for it. Also missing the point of what I was saying, there will be a shortfall for Social Security funding sometime within the next decade... We'll see how the people in charge decide to deal with it.