Gary Stevenson

It's been talked about a lot in the press, especially over in the US.

It's a really good opportunity for us to look at what Jeff Bezos is saying, understand why he is saying it, and basically understand where we are at the moment in the kind of global fight against inequality for a fairer tax system, for fairer taxation of the super rich, what our strengths are, what our weaknesses are.

how it's being attacked and basically how we need to be smart and what we need to understand in order to get that fair attack system that we need okay so let's jump straight into the interview now the the headline moment was jeff bezos arguing that people on average salaries should pay less tax yeah i you know i started thinking about this and doing some research a nurse in queens who makes 75 000 a year

At the first glimpse, this might seem interesting.

Why do we have a billionaire arguing for ordinary people to pay lower taxes?

At the moment we have a tax system where billionaires pay very low taxes, almost nothing, and ordinary people pay, if you add up all of their taxes, close to 50%.

So it's a great tax system, a balance in favour of Jeff Bezos and other billionaires, but he's saying ordinary people should pay less tax.

Okay, interesting, perhaps surprising.

Why is he saying that?

Really, the answer is very, very simple.

In order to know that, we just simply need to see the question that he was answering.

So here is the question that Jeff Bezos was asked, and his response was cut taxes on teachers.

OK, so the question was quite delivered in quite a roundabout way by CNBC.

Basically, everybody's talking about taxing the super rich.

You are super rich.

What do you think about it?

And that is the question in response to which Jeff Bezos eventually got round to saying, I think that ordinary teachers should pay less tax.

um now if we first analyze this uh from an economic perspective at a surface level this is like quite a like strange argument right because just that it's most basic you so jeff bez has very intentionally picked a salary level 75 000 a year which is quite close to the american average

you the average man or woman paying less taxes is just quite obviously not a substitute for billionaires paying more taxes right like if we're in a situation where government needs more tax money and Jeff Bezos says how about instead of that we charge ordinary workers less tax money that doesn't solve the problem of tax money right this is a bit like

You and I go to a restaurant and you know that I'm like loaded because you've been reading the Daily Mail and you are struggling for money.