How Jeff Bezos Became Public Enemy Number One

[Music] this episode is brought to you by morning brew hi welcome to another episode of cold fusion so just a couple of things before we get started thanks for all of your comments on the last video about the flooding of my apartment it's been a bit frustrating but the floorboards and carpets will be replaced and just quickly one more thing i've started up a second channel just for the music i produce but i haven't really said anything about it it's almost at 5 000 subscribers which is cool i like it because it's almost like a small little secret where i'm free to experiment with stuff and all of you guys commenting over there are so nice so thank you it's a big inspiration okay so on to the rest of the episode jeff bezos recently took to the skies in a private rocket made by his company blue origin while some people thought that the engineering aspect was awesome there were many others that were blind with rage it didn't take much for me to see the consensus online hate is a strong word but it seems like a lot of people really really don't like jeff bezos in their eyes they saw a billionaire flaunting his wealth while the average person was having a tough time but is that all why do people hate jeff bezos so much in this episode we'll take a look at the top three reasons at why people are mad and for the sake of fairness i'll also supply the counter arguments others hold i'll be leaving my opinion out of this one so let's take a look [Music] it's important to note that jeff bezos wasn't born with a silver spoon in his mouth he wasn't always a billionaire and it was a long road to get there born in 1964 life for baby jeff and his 17 year old mother wasn't easy jeff's father would drink too much and cause problems at home after less than two years of marriage his parents would divorce jeff's mother now on her own struggled to make ends meet while working a secondary job she didn't even have enough money to afford a house phone determined to make life better for her and her son she enrolled in college classes and the professors permitted her to bring her baby to class at college she eventually met and married mike bezos a cuban immigrant who would step in as the father role for jeff interestingly the now billionaire's biological father was once a unicyclist and a circus performer and when he was tracked down in 2012 he was running a small bicycle shop jeff's biological father reportedly had not seen his son in 50 years and was utterly confused that his son was now the ceo of amazon jeff bezos proved to be a bright but regular kid he took up a job at mcdonald's while in high school after graduating college he would understand the potential of the internet and go on to found amazon in his garage in 1994. for the full story of that you can check out the cold fusion episode on amazon needless to say the venture went very well and all of this brings us to today despite recently stepping down as amazon's ceo jeff bezos is still not seen favorably in the public light the first reason and the most obvious is amazon's working conditions and pay amazon employs one million workers making it the second largest employer in the us and that's after walmart according to fortune quote workers at amazon warehouses across america state grueling working conditions they say that they have too few bathroom breaks which are all timed excessive productivity goals and an unsafe working environment the pandemic only exacerbated problems as more people turned to delivery amazon workers had had enough and did protest working conditions in previous years but not much has changed in a press release the company stated quote about 40 of work-related injuries at amazon are musculoskeletal disorders which includes sprains or strains caused by repetitive motions and for this work the wages are less than 40k a year or less than about 20 dollars per hour amazon doesn't see working in their warehouses as a long-term thing in fact they stated that employers who stayed longer became less efficient while demanding more pay hurting the business turnover at amazon is very high with an annual rate of roughly 150 of warehouse workers amazon is also not in favor of workers unions here is a viral 2018 leaked video meant for managers if you see warning signs of potential organizing notify your building hrm and gm site leader immediately the most obvious signs would include use of words associated with unions or union-led movements like living wage or steward union graffiti union t-shirts hats jackets or other clothing union flyers some signs are less obvious than finding the actual union flyer examples include associates who normally aren't connected to each other suddenly hanging out together groups of associates scatter when approached by management often it is the change in behavior that is the warning sign more than the actual behavior itself other problems include a policy of closely surveilling workers causing a culture of fear the cameras are on staff 24 7 and if you don't meet the standards or rates of filling you can be fired there are screens that show how long you have left to pack each box adding additional pressure according to some workers you can't talk to others and you basically scan like a robot the entire day and if you're not scanning enough amazon can file an inquiry the data that they gather from everyone's movements is used to optimize the performance of the company those on the opposite side argue that these workers should simply find another job or that increasing wages will result in jobs lost due to automation as automation will be cheaper for the company's bottom line amazon's caver system robots are a prime example the second reason that people do not like jeff bezos is his net worth bezos is currently the richest man in the world passing bill gates in 2017. apart from amazon he owns the news publication the washington post the streaming site twitch audible imdb and the food outlet whole foods his net worth is over 200 billion dollars enough to end hunger in the us seven times over the pandemic destroyed countless small businesses in the us while amazon stayed open doing better than ever before and leaving a lot of people resentful if you were to consider jeff bezos net worth increase in 2020 an increase of 75 billion dollars as a wage he would make 8.5 million dollars per hour or about 142 thousand dollars per minute [Music] psychologically a lot of people don't like this why does one person need so much money how can one man make significantly more money in one minute than the average american does in one year it seems unfair but that's not the only reason people hold disdain the next element is taxes in early 2021 irs filings were leaked by the publication propublica it revealed that the top 25 richest people grew their net worth by 401 billion dollars between 2014 and 2018. despite this they only paid 13.6 billion dollars in federal taxes on average about 3.4 of their wealth gains over this period these revelations sent shock waves around social discourse but things are a bit more complicated than they seemed on the surface what most people forget to realize is that most of the wealth gained by these billionaires is three increases in the stock market in which they all have large holdings you can blame the monetary policies of the federal reserve or u.s tax laws for allowing this to happen low interest rates and easy money from the federal reserve allowed stocks to boom for over a decade as for the u.s tax law gains in the stock market is not defined as taxable income unless sold in other words the u.s tax system taxes income usually in the form of wages and capital gains but not other forms like stock market-driven increases in wealth on paper and that's just the way it is whether you think this is fair or not will depend on your political leaning propublica also reveals the common methods of reducing tax for billionaires propublica explained the ultra wealthy buy an asset or build a company or inherit a fortune as long as they don't sell they own no taxes they keep their income as low as possible since every dollar they earn can be taxed step 2 borrow they borrow against their holdings and the bank gives them a really good deal i'll loan you 10 million dollars with only 3 interest but if you take a 10 million dollar salary from your company you'll owe almost 37 percent to the irs so the ultra wealthy use loan money to fund their lifestyles that's how a billionaire can live the most luxurious life imaginable while reporting little to no taxable income step 3 die when they die these lucky few often use complicated trusts and philanthropic foundations to avoid the estate tax and their heirs can inherit stocks and other assets tax free a new generation is ultra wealthy and the cycle starts all over again between 2014 and 2018 warren buffett paid 10 cents on every 100 he made elon musk michael bloomberg and george soros also did the same thing but to slightly lesser degrees in bezos case he was able to pay zero dollars in tax in some years by pushing the rules to the extreme and taking advantage of every loophole for instance in 2007 he stated that he made only 46 million dollars despite his net worth rising by 3.8 billion he was able to offset every dollar he made with losses from side investments and various deductions like interest expenses on debt and again in 2011 despite him being worth 18 billion he reported to the tax agencies a loss and even received a 4 000 tax credit for his children so zooming out a little bit wealth inequality is now evident to everyone in the us and people are starting to get curious about how it's actually happening we touched on this extensively in the cold fusion episode on how money is created on top of this seeing bezos pay such little tax makes people very angry for them taxes are needed for social services roads and bridges and social security so it isn't fair others will argue that that's just how the law is and because of that bezos's money is out of the reach of the government a lot of people want to pay for his products so the company is worth a lot and it's his money fair and square to others still who aren't strictly ideologically driven they would say that maybe there needs to be a middle ground solution let's take a look at our news update brought to you by morning brew after jeff bezos landed from his rocket flight he states that the sales from private seats on blue origin flights are already approaching 100 million quote the demand is very very high seven thousand six hundred people participated in an auction to win a seat on the most recent flight and the winning bid was 28 million dollars according to morgan stanley the space economy as a whole could grow to 1 trillion dollars by 2040 if you want to read more stories like this and are interested in science technology and business morning brew is a great way to do that it collects all the latest news stories so you don't have to trundle through sources manually and it brings them straight to your inbox monday to sunday and best of all it's free it only takes 15 seconds to sign up so click the link in the description below to get started the third and final reason about why there's so much dislike for jeff bezos is the government surveillance connections amazon has another side to them the company supplies surveillance capabilities to the us government in the form of cloud storage amazon works with the us immigration and customs enforcement otherwise known as ice but they also work with the department of homeland security according to the guardian amazon web services hosts the dhs databases that allow the department and its agencies to track and apprehend immigrants amazon is also in talks to expand this to sensitive bio data including eye color tattoos and other identifiers amazon's web services platform also stores data for the cia there's also concerns that amazon alexas can network with each other even without an internet connection rob bradman explains [Music] alexa echoes are ubiquitous it seems simple enough it's a voice recognition device and it's great for selecting music and even doing quick internet searches but truly the average person does not know that the alexa echo itself has no voice recognition capability nada it is not powerful enough to do voice recognition so it keeps sending the sounds to amazon to do voice recognition on the big amazon servers in the cloud the amazon cloud servers that's where the power is this is why an alexa echo is so cheap it just functions as a microphone and speaker the problem here is that whether you like it or not all your voice captures are sent to the amazon cloud they didn't tell you that they put certain features in the alexa echo in the ring camera that they would be utilizing later on like now and that feature my friends is a 900 megahertz transmitter and receiver that is built into the echos and the cameras all these products will now work to create the amazon sidewalk network amazon echo has the capability to talk to or listen to devices in the area up to a range of one half mile so if there's another echo around all these echoes and ring cameras will be connected in a mesh network this went online on june 8th your voice the camera videos and now the data sense these devices capture this data encrypts it and sends it to amazon so only amazon can see it now your devices are doing things you can't even understand or see there are so many amazon echoes that every square inch of a big city could be completely covered by this mesh network if i went to someone's house with a ring camera and an echo i suddenly participate in the spy network by having my voice captured and having facial recognition done and now the amazon sidewalk can then in theory capture my phone bluetooth identity and rfids on my person and my vehicle and then sidewalk and determine the location of each device remember that location of each echo is known so whatever the echo finds is also a location beacon if you want out of this spy network you can't just opt out of alexa echo because you have to opt out the entire neighborhood as long as there's someone within half a mile that has an echo you're docked these devices will now collect rf data which will be used to capture information from devices and be able to derive locations they will also be able to control devices since it is also a transmitter no internet required or wi-fi just a private radio network a radio network that is not even controlled by the owners of the devices but most will basically turn a blind eye to this and say oh well i have nothing to light anyway and i don't need to explain further and why people don't like this this does the company image and hence jeff bezos no favors so in conclusion jeff bezos is seen as a man who became filthy rich of multitudes of workers in poor conditions his former company also has close government ties it's an interesting case because companies like nike apple and many other electronic companies use cheap labor the nestle company is stealing fresh water and google also has ties to the cia but these companies seem nebulous yes they all have ceos but mentally to the outsider these people aren't seen as closely tied to their respective companies as jeff bezos is when you think of amazon you still think of jeff bezos so even though he has left the company now he might have a hard time winning people over so what do you guys think the best place to discuss this will be over on the cold fusion discord i'll leave the links in the description below alright so that's about it from me my name is digogo and you've been watching cold fusion and i'll catch you again soon for the next episode cheers [Music] you

Channel: ColdFusion

Views: 1,549,971

Keywords: Coldfusion, TV, Dagogo, Altraide, Technology, Apple, Google, Samsung, Facebook, Tesla

Id: QTOFrg2EAQs

Length: 17min 21sec (1041 seconds)

Published: Sat Jul 24 2021

Reddit Comments

[u/RojoDiablo723]

He just needs to pay his fair share of taxes end of it.

[u/notjawn]

I mean he should pay his fair share of taxes and he needs to strongly advocate for better treatment of Amazon workers (he can't do too much as he's not head of the company anymore) he is not some super villain though. You know damn well if you had that much money you're not gonna let some jackoff from the internet tell you how to spend it.

[u/drastic2]

I gotta put like .1% of it to the shaving the head to look like a super villain. I mean, do you think his PR people were like, “nah brah, looks good on you”.

[u/delete_this_post]

"There is a climate in this country that's very dangerous."

"It's dangerous out there for billionaires?"

"Billionaires are people too. We are leaders in technology, in industry, in finance. Look at history: do you know who else vilified a tiny minority of financiers and progressive thinkers called the Jews?"

"Wait a minute. Did you just compare the treatment of billionaires in America today to the plight of the Jews in Nazi Germany?"

"Absolutely. One could argue that billionaires are actually treated worse. And we didn't even do anything wrong."

Edit: Bezos didn't say any of this. It's a quote from Silicon Valley. (See below)

[u/bobyouger]

Billionaires are hoarding wealth while countries are in tatters. We shouldn’t be arguing minimum wage increases when the real problem is glaringly obvious. No one person is deserving of a billion dollars. Full stop.

[u/Capnclippers]

I worked for amazon and it was pretty horrible. I think it would be easily fixed if they cut down the quota by half and didn't make you pay for food/drinks.

[u/icbint]

Pay taxes

Pay employees a decent wage

Pretty simple