US Senator Bernie Sanders harshly criticized Amazon CEO and world’s richest man Jeff Bezos for corporate greed, writes Business Insider.
“Bezos and Musk have more wealth than the poorest 40 percent of Americans. Meanwhile, we are seeing the highest hunger rates in the country ever in decades,” Sanders said in his opening remarks at the Senate Budget Committee hearing. .
He noted that Bezos is preventing Amazon employees from joining a union. Sanders pointed out the mismatch between the billionaire’s wealth growth and the struggle for decent wages for ordinary workers. “Bezos became $ 77 billion richer during the pandemic while denying hundreds of thousands of Amazon workers paid sick leave,” he said.
Sanders added that Bezos is not alone in this approach and denounced “corporate greed” that leads to income inequality.
Earlier, a group of American senators led by Elizabeth Warren proposed to introduce a tax in the country for the super-rich. For billionaires in the United States, the initiative could result in multibillion-dollar annual tax payments.
According to the authors of the initiative, such fees will make the situation in the country fairer and will allow the treasury to collect an additional three trillion dollars in taxes over 10 years.