Sadly, we do not have enough journalists like Stephanie Ruhle calling out the corporatocracy. If we had more program hosts educating more Americans, the lobbyists and crooked politicians would be much less effective. Ruhle perfectly calls out corporations abusing their employees and the American taxpayers. This behavior is classic corporate welfare.
Stephanie Ruhle slams Jeff Bezos and worker abusive corporations
“In today’s ‘Money, Power, Politics,’ are we subsidizing low-wage employees for companies with record profits?” Stephanie Ruhle asked. “A comprehensive report from UC Berkeley’s Labor Center studied working families who rely on public assistance programs like Medicaid and CHIP, the basic household income assistance program Temporary Aid to Needy Families, and Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP. That means U.S. taxpayers are footing the bill. That’s about 153 billion bucks every year.”
“The Intercept and the New Food Economy examined this problem, focusing specifically on Amazon employees using SNAP food benefits,” Ruhle continued. “In the state of Arizona, please listen to this, one in every three of Amazon employees depend on SNAP to put food on their family’s table. In Pennsylvania and Ohio, the figure appears to be about one in ten. The president for his part consistently picks fights with Amazon about their use of the U.S. Postal Service for deliveries and their dominance in the retail market, and even Jeff Bezos owning The Washington Post. But here’s what makes no sense. None of those touch the legitimate criticisms of Amazon. ‘You want’ to criticize Amazon? I’m going to help you do that right now, but what the president is going after is nonsense.”
“When jobs do not pay enough, workers turn to public assistance in order to meet their basic needs, and that burden is falling on taxpayers,” An exasperated Ruhle preached. “But when the head of that company paying low wages happens to be the richest man in modern history — let me remind you of this, Jeff Bezos on Amazon Prime Day become worth $150 billion — when he’s worth that much money, you begin to start asking the question, are companies like this who are paying their employees so little gaming the system?”
This is what unfettered capitalism looks like. Corporations and the wealthy extract from the poor and the middle-class, pay them slave labor wages, and then the taxpayer subsidizes these employees to ensure they don’t starve.
(h/t MediaMatters)
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Then Republicans think it is wise to give monster tax breaks to the wealthy and big corporations so they can buy back their stock to inflate the price and make it even more valuable!
Then the Deficit Hawk Republicans who during the Obama years were so intent on not increasing the deficit by extending the borrowing capacity of the government now during their choice as president have no problem with increasing the deficit by 1.5 Trillion dollars by giving the wealthy and corporations the huge tax cuts they did not need or ask for! They are providing them with Corporate Welfare which sucks so many more dollars out of the country while rewarding the corporations who will not pay a living wage so their employees do not need Government Assistance!
Then to top it off now that they blew a hole in the deficit, they don’t like how large it is so figure they need to cut Social Programs like SNAP, WIC & FOOD STAMPS claiming the poor and middle class are lazy and do not want to work! They need to cut the Corporate Welfare which is sucking the most money out of the system! Then they also bow down to the wealthy and corporations by refusing to encourage the minimum wage to increase to a living wage!
It does not seem to occur to them that the people on Government Assistance are not the ones sucking money out of the system and making taxpayers foot the bill! It is the big corporations who demand corporate welfare while forcing their employers to rely on Government Assistance!
You, Ruhl and McGee, are both absolutely correct. Unfortunately, all the petitions we sign destined for our congressmen and senators do no have any effect. We need to vote their enablers out of office and get rid of the corporate welfare income tax that was ripped from the American people.