Blondie: Dear Jeff Bezos

An Open Letter To Amazon’s Jeff Bezos…

Dear Mr. Bezos

I have been awed by the extent that cities and states have whored themselves out to attract Amazon’s promise of 50,000 jobs.

They have fallen over each other to give tax breaks to the richest company in the country. And it’s far leftist owner. So much for taxing the rich…..

New Jersey is promising billions in tax relief. Missouri is promising an unproven people moving tube to connect St Louis to KCMO. (I kid not)

Amazon has an entire department that is task with getting all manner of tax breaks. On one hand that is makes good business sense.

On the other is it totally hypocritical for leftist Bezos who is against all thing conservative republican to pay less taxes than other businesses already in the states.

This is a double hit to Amazon customers. Make it on your own, Bezos!! Be brave!

QUOTE: … Think of the downside of making Amazon and its people deeply dependent upon corporate welfare. Think of the gross unfairness of huge tax carve-outs for Amazon that are denied to other smaller businesses (which have to pay for their initial costs and ongoing costs out of their own hard-earned dollars). How do you want your company and its people to succeed — by winning in the marketplace.… or by securing a fatter portion of government largesse?

Above all, think of the hypocrisy of preaching a gospel of “obsessive customer focus” as the key to maintaining “Day 1 vitality,” while gouging money out of taxpayers. According to Consumer Intelligence Research Partners, there are now about 85 million Amazon Prime members — that’s 68 percent of all U.S. households! As Amazon becomes increasingly ubiquitous, most of every dollar that Amazon takes out of taxpayer pockets will be money stolen (or lifted) from its own customers.

An Open Letter to Jeff Bezos

The American Spectator Andrew Wilson Oct 20, 2017

An Open Letter to Jeff Bezos… Beware the perils of becoming a subsidy junkie.

Dear Jeff:
Amazon is amazing.

In just 20 years as a public company, the company you founded has experienced a thousand-fold growth in sales — going from $148 million in 1997 to $138 billion in 2016 and a projected $160 billion in the current year. Adjusted for splits, the price of the stock has gone up 200-fold — from a high of $5 a share in 1997 to $1,004 a share today.

To paraphrase the bard, Amazon doth bestride the narrow world of retailing like a colossus. Others quake at its every movement. Back in June, when you announced the acquisition of Whole Foods, the stocks of other grocery chains plummeted — with Kroger falling 26 percent in the two days following the announcement and SuperValu down 16 percent. Wal-Mart fell 5 percent. Within days, Amazon’s market cap went up nearly as much as the $13.7 billion it agreed to pay for Whole Foods.

In many years of writing about business and economics, I can think of no other enterprise that has come so far so fast. Even so, waxing biblical in your 2016 letter to shareholders, you said it is still “Day 1” (the first day of creation) in the company’s evolution. When someone asked you at a recent “all-hands meeting” what Day 2 would look like, you answered:

Day 2 is stasis. Followed by irrelevance. Followed by excruciating, painful decline. Followed by death. (sounds like the NFL) And that is why it is always Day 1.

Your words prompt me to warn you that Day 2 may be approaching much more quickly than you think. Surely you don’t want Amazon to become a subsidy junkie. If that happens, you can say goodbye to Day 1 and hello to stasis. You will be turning Amazon into just another big, bloated, competition-adverse corporation — seeking public assistance for private gain.

Right now, cities and states across the country are competing with one another to throw big money — taxpayer money — at Amazon in the hope of being chosen as the site for Amazon’s proposed second headquarters. With one hand, you dangle the promise of up to 50,000 jobs with an average annual compensation of more than $100,000 per employee. With the other, you rattle a tin cup, stating in your request for proposals: