Jeff Bezos Miffed At Biden For Saying Billionaires Profit From Inflation

Aside from the weed-smoking Elon Musk, another billionaire has skewered US President Joe Biden, who has criticized tech billionaires and other wealthy US rentiers for not paying enough taxes and profiting from inflation, as studies by Evonomics magazine showed.

Photo Insert: White House spokesperson Andrew Bates told CNBC that "it doesn't take a huge leap" to figure out why Bezos would disapprove of higher corporate taxes.

Writing for Salon late on May 21, 2022, Jan Skolnik said “Musk, who also owns and operates SpaceX, is not the only billionaire to lock horns with the Biden administration as of late.”

On Monday, May 16, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, the world's second-richest man, got into an online scuffle with Biden over inflation after the president suggested that he would combat the soaring cost of food and fuel with corporate tax hikes.

"You want to bring down inflation?" Biden tweeted. "Let's make sure the wealthiest corporations pay their fair share." Bezos immediately called the president's tweet "misdirection," suggesting that the Department of Homeland Security's newly-formed Disinformation Governance Board should flag the post.

"Raising corp taxes is fine to discuss. Taming inflation is critical to discuss. Mushing them together is just misdirection," Bezos tweeted.

The exchange set off vigorous debate around the apparent link between inflation and corporate taxes, with many conservative pundits arguing that hikes might exacerbate price increases.

However, Lindsay Owens, executive director of the Groundwork Collaborative, told Salon that corporate tax hikes would disincentivize companies from applying excessive markups to their products.

"Since the pandemic, about 54% of the price increases we're seeing are coming from what we call the markup," she said in an interview.

"That piece gets a lot less fun and a lot less lucrative," she added, when "it's taxed back and shipped off to the Treasury."

White House spokesperson Andrew Bates told CNBC that "it doesn't take a huge leap" to figure out why Bezos would disapprove of higher corporate taxes.

Bezos, he said, "opposes an economic agenda for the middle class that cuts some of the biggest costs families face … by asking the richest taxpayers and corporations to pay their fair share."

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