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Comment by locklock | Hacker News Reader

I'm fine with outrage-inducing propaganda against people who have tens or hundreds of billions of dollars since that class as a whole spends so much time putting out propaganda in their favor. I'm not particularly interested in the details as long as it elevates consciousness about the inherent problems with a society that allows Jeff Bezos to have more money than he could spend in ten thousand lifetimes while millions of people aren't entirely sure how they're going to afford food next week

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> Jeff Bezos to have more money

Out of all the rich people we could talk about, Bezos is actually one of the ones I have the least problem with. Bezos has a lot of money, but he doesn't have tens of billions of dollars of "money". His net worth is mostly tied up in Amazon ownership, and if he tried to liquidate more than a small fraction of it then it'd suddenly be worth much less, both because of increased supply, and because Amazon's value is very tied up in his ability to drive the company. Maybe we could talk about problems with a system that allow Amazon to be worth as much as it is, but for the founder of a company to be worth a lot because they built a big company, that doesn't seem like a problem to me.

Amazon is not Jeff Bezos. Taxing him would be a whole different topic of conversation. Probably more on the topics of executive compensation, taxes for high incomes, and a bunch of other possible subjects.

Interesting discussion to be had, for sure, but not what the article is really about.

It all falls under the same umbrella, which as you accurately described as "rich guys who don't share anything" and as far as I'm concerned any amount of elevated consciousness around that is a good thing, even if strictly speaking taking money from Bezos the man and Amazon the company are two separate types of taxation and two different discussions. Bezos and his company Amazon both make almost unfathomable amounts of money and don't pay anywhere near what I'd consider a fair share of it back into society. As Amazon's PR people point out this is legal, naturally, but this article does a good job of contrasting Amazon using every tax trick in the book with normal human beings who aren't able to deduct their expenses for cancer treatment. Likely because the lobby representing the financial interests of individuals with cancer is not all that strong.

"Amazon doesn’t pay taxes, but I pay taxes" is a very good sound byte from this, even if the reasons why that's the case are obviously more complicated.

Amazon is not a human person. Which human people pay too little taxes for the wealth they receive or consume? That's what matters.

How about we don’t encourage outrage inducing propaganda against anyone? If you have an issue with some someone has actually done (like for example putting out their own propoganda) then by all means be critical of that. What value is there in accepting vapid nonsense, just because it targets someone you dislike?

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