More Government For Thee, But Not For Me: Jeff Bezos Battles Seattle Over Higher Taxes

Brittany M. Hughes | May 14, 2018
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Liberalism is all fun and games, until someone reaches into your wallet to fund it.

Take Jeff Bezos, for example. The billionaire CEO of Amazon and owner of the Washington Post is really good and backing plenty of bleeding heart liberal causes, including donating copious amounts of his own cash to gay marriage, LGBT issues and college funds for illegal aliens.

He’s also really good at not paying taxes, utilizing some of the same tax loopholes that, when Trump took advantage of them, damned him in the eyes of many left-leaning 99-percenters who slammed the president as greedy. (There was also that time the Washington Post ranted about "income inequality" while Bezos quietly raked in about $17 billion. Awkward.)

Now, Bezos is looking to screw over Washington State’s homeless population by having the audacity to fight Seattle’s latest tax proposal and keep more of his company's money.

For shame.

Bezos's gripe is with the Progressive Tax on Business, a new fee Seattle’s looking to impose on the city’s largest corporations to bolster their homeless services fund. The regulation would levy a $0.26 tax per hour per worker on companies that make $20 million in revenue or more annually.

Under the new rule, and given their enormous size, Amazon would be looking at coughing up about $20 million in new taxes. And naturally, Bezos isn’t a huge fan of that arrangement.

The company – one of the city’s largest employers with more than 45,000 Seattle-based workers, according to the Huffington Post – now says it’s halted construction on its new facility in downtown Seattle and will start pulling some of its business out of the city if the new tax proposal passes.

Now it should be noted that I, a big fan of smaller government and lower tax burdens, understand exactly where Amazon’s coming from. It’s simple math. Higher taxes equal higher costs. Higher costs equal fewer customers and lower hiring ability. Lower hiring leads to fewer workers, which leads to higher local unemployment and more struggling families And around and around we go.

But for liberals, Bezos is an interesting study into when “compassion” matters, and when it doesn’t.

For example, Bezos – a political “liberaltarian,” at best – has no problem making a big to-do over shucking out millions to set up college funds for illegal aliens over American students whose families have lawfully paid into the system. But when it comes to the billionaire funding ultra-progressive Seattle’s big-government plan to help the city’s nearly 12,000 homeless people? Not so much.

It’s also interesting when a company garners the ire of the “compassionate Left,” and when it doesn’t. For example, when Chick-fil-a, whose CEO Dan Cathy is worth about $5 billion, voluntarily donates millions in college scholarships, support for Christian athlete groups and food for the homeless, they’re still evil because their owner is a Christian who holds a persona' belief in traditional marriage.

But when Jeff Bezos, a socially liberal billionaire who supports gay marriage and illegal immigration and is worth a stunning $132 billion, holds a local city's economy hostage by refusing to bow to the left's own solution of government-forced wealth redistribution for the poor?

Crickets.

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