Bezos bashes Biden over inflation, blaming stimulus spending

Jeff Bezos is criticizing Joe Biden for inflation, using Twitter to blame the president for the sharpest rise in prices in 40 years and saying the rising costs facing Americans equate to “a regressive tax which harms the less affluent. “

Bezos’ $ 137 billion fortune is only behind Tesla CEO Elon Musk, among the richest people in the world, according to the Bloomberg Billionaire Index. Mr Biden to raise taxes on large corporations as a way to fight inflation. .

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“Do you want to reduce inflation? Let’s make sure the richest corporations pay their fair share,” Biden tweeted on May 13th.

Bezos retweeted Mr Biden’s statement with his assessment of inflation. “Raising corporate taxes is good to discuss. Taming inflation is key to arguing. Putting it together is just a bad direction,” he wrote.

In a separate tweet, Bezos added: “In fact, the administration tried to inject even more stimulus into an already overheated inflationary economy and only Manchin saved them from themselves. Inflation is a regressive tax that hurts the most. “The poor are not helping the country.”

Bezos remains Amazon’s largest individual shareholder, founding in 1994, with nearly 10% of its shares.

Amazon and other large companies have long been the focus of criticism of falling corporate tax rates. a few digits —And even lower — because of the tax loopholes and tax breaks that are not available to most Americans. For example, Amazon’s financial statements show that it had one 1.2% federal income tax rate in 2019, or about 13 percentage points lower than the average U.S. tax rate that year.

At the same time, companies enjoyed theirs last year most profitable year since 1950, due to government aid and consumer spending driven by stimulus spending.

Economists cite government stimulus efforts as a contributing factor to the high rate of inflation, which increased 8.3% in April. With cash from stimulus checks and child tax credit payments, households increased spending, adding demand to an economy that was still recovering from the pandemic.

Mr. Biden authorized a round of stimulus checks, while his predecessor, Donald Trump, signed bills sending two rounds of stimulus checks to eligible U.S. households.

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