On Thursday night, Tucker Carlson may have found his inner Bernie Sanders as he targeted numerous billionaires for not paying their employees enough.
Senator Bernie Sanders wants to slap a special tax on Amazon and other big companies that employ workers who collect food stamps and other public assistance. But Amazon disputes Sanders' depiction, saying its pay and benefits are competitive with other retailers.
Mediaite reports Carlson began by invoking Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos and his net worth (roughly $150 billion), making him one of the richest people on the planet. However, he insisted that Bezos had enough to “pay his employees well.”
“A huge number of Amazon workers are so poorly paid, they qualify for federal welfare benefits,” Carlson told his viewers. “Nearly 1-3 Amazon employees in Arizona, for example, was on food stamps last year. Jeff Bezos isn’t paying his workers enough to eat, so you made up the difference with your tax dollars. Next time you see Jeff Bezos, make certain that he says ‘thank you.'”
Jeff Bezos is the richest man in the world. Many of his employees are so poor, you’re paying their welfare benefits. And he’s not the only tech billionaire offloading his payroll costs onto taxpayers. This is an indefensible scam. Why is only Bernie talking about it? pic.twitter.com/PdXBfQsHsq— Tucker Carlson (@TuckerCarlson) August 31, 2018
The Fox News host then took aim at the Walton family, the founders of Walmart who collectively are worth $175 billion, said they could “afford to be generous with their workers,” but noted that in 2013, their employees were given $6 billion for “food stamps, Medicaid, and housing assistance.” He also dragged Uber founder Travis Kalanick, who’s worth nearly $5 billion, for having drivers who make less than minimum wage and how thanks to tax payer money, Kalanick gets to “keep buying bigger houses and more airplanes.”
“If you could think of a less fair system than this, send us an e-mail. We’d love to hear about it,” Carlson continued.
“This system is indefensible. And yet, almost nobody ever complains about it. How come? Well, conservatives like us support the free market and for good reason. The free market works, but there’s nothing free about this market. A lot of these companies operate as monopolies. They hate markets. They use government regulation to crush competition. There’s nothing conservative about that just as there’s nothing conservative about most big corporations. Just the opposite- they’re the backbone of the left.”
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