Amazon founder Jeffrey Bezos blasted President Joe Biden for suggesting in a Twitter post that raising the tax rate on the nation’s wealthiest corporations will help solve the inflation crisis.
“The newly created Disinformation Board should review this tweet, or maybe they need to form a new Non Sequitur Board instead,” Bezos wrote in retort.
A non-sequitur is a logical fallacy where a conclusion lacks even a deceptive appearance of valid reasoning. Hence the fallacy is called “non-sequitur” which is Latin for “it does not follow” because the disjointedness of the argument is so clear to the audience.
“Raising corp taxes is fine to discuss. Taming inflation is critical to discuss. Mushing them together is just misdirection,” Bezos wrote.
The newly created Disinformation Board should review this tweet, or maybe they need to form a new Non Sequitur Board instead. Raising corp taxes is fine to discuss. Taming inflation is critical to discuss. Mushing them together is just misdirection. https://t.co/ye4XiNNc2v
— Jeff Bezos (@JeffBezos) May 14, 2022
Bezos, who also owns the Democrat-friendly Washington Post, was responding to a Friday tweet from the president in which Biden wrote: “You want to bring down inflation? Let’s make sure the wealthiest corporations pay their fair share.”
Biden did not specifically target Amazon — the nation’s largest e-retailer — in his Twitter post. However, Biden has in the past accused Amazon of not paying its fair share, most notably during his campaign trail.
In a May 2020 interview with CNBC, Biden told the outlet that he thought Amazon “should start paying their taxes.”
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“I don’t think any company, I don’t give a damn how big they are, the Lord Almighty, should absolutely be in a position where they pay no tax and make billions and billions and billions of dollars, No. 1,” Biden said
“The whole notion of this is: Are you playing the game fairly? What’s the capitalist system all about? The capitalist system is about everyone dealing fairly and dealing straight up with the American people and with their employees,” Biden told the outlet.
Biden and Amazon clashed before that May 2020 interview. One of the most notable back and forths happened in 2019.
Biden had tweeted, “I have nothing against Amazon, but no company pulling in billions of dollars of profits should pay a lower tax rate than firefighters and teachers. We need to reward work, not just wealth.”
The company responded: “We’ve paid $2.6B in corporate taxes since 2016. We pay every penny we owe. Congress designed tax laws to encourage companies to reinvest in the American economy. We have. $200B in investments since 2011 & 300K US jobs. Assume VP Biden’s complaint is w/ the tax code, not Amazon.”
We’ve paid $2.6B in corporate taxes since 2016. We pay every penny we owe. Congress designed tax laws to encourage companies to reinvest in the American economy. We have. $200B in investments since 2011 & 300K US jobs. Assume VP Biden’s complaint is w/ the tax code, not Amazon. https://t.co/uPUv1Tzlma
— Amazon News (@amazonnews) June 13, 2019
Biden on the campaign trail claimed his presidency would be an era of economic progress and “Build Back Better,” promising to restore the American economy from COVID-19 related shocks.
With inflation pegged at 8.3 percent in April, the president faces major challenges as the country grapples with gas price hikes, and supply chain shortages.
Faced with tanking popularity ratings, the Biden administration has resorted to a spin game to deflect as much as blame as possible for the economic crisis, according to The Annenberg Public Policy Center.
Thus far, the president has blamed Vladimir Putin, businesses supposedly not paying their fair share, and COVID-19 for the economic woes without discussing how his own pandemic relief programs worsened the crisis.
In a report published by the liberal website Vox, political correspondent Andrew Prokop wrote that Biden’s American Rescue Plan — the $1.9 trillion stimulus bill passed by Democrats in March 2021 without a single Republican vote in Congress — has helped contribute to the inflation crisis.
The outlet noted that Democrats seemed to have underestimated the dangers more spending would bring through inflation early on.
