Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, who is rescinding a $2-an-hour
hazard pay increase for his warehouse workers at the end of
the month, led the pack, increasing his personal wealth by
$34.6 billion since the onset of the pandemic. Facebook CEO
Mark Zuckerberg was close behind, adding $25 billion to his
fortune. Tesla CEO Elon Musk, who reopened his California
auto plant in defiance of state regulators and with the support
of President Trump, saw a 48 percent increase in his wealth
to $36 billion in just eight weeks as the stock market
rebounded from its collapse. All told, the nation’s 620
billionaires now control $3.382 trillion, a 15 percent increase
in two months.
Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, who is rescinding a $2-an-hour
hazard pay increase for his warehouse workers at the end of
the month, led the pack, increasing his personal wealth by
$34.6 billion since the onset of the pandemic. Facebook CEO
Mark Zuckerberg was close behind, adding $25 billion to his
fortune. Tesla CEO Elon Musk, who reopened his California
auto plant in defiance of state regulators and with the support
of President Trump, saw a 48 percent increase in his wealth
to $36 billion in just eight weeks as the stock market
rebounded from its collapse. All told, the nation’s 620
billionaires now control $3.382 trillion, a 15 percent increase
in two months.
hazard pay increase for his warehouse workers at the end of
the month, led the pack, increasing his personal wealth by
$34.6 billion since the onset of the pandemic. Facebook CEO
Mark Zuckerberg was close behind, adding $25 billion to his
fortune. Tesla CEO Elon Musk, who reopened his California
auto plant in defiance of state regulators and with the support
of President Trump, saw a 48 percent increase in his wealth
to $36 billion in just eight weeks as the stock market
rebounded from its collapse. All told, the nation’s 620
billionaires now control $3.382 trillion, a 15 percent increase
in two months.
Tidings of Terror in Beverly Hills
Tidings of Terror in Beverly Hills
Photos from four square blocks and a park.
The revolution has a message for Beverly Hills:
Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, who is rescinding a $2-an-hour hazard pay increase for his warehouse workers at the end of the month, led the pack, increasing his personal wealth by $34.6 billion since the onset of the pandemic. Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg was close behind, adding $25 billion to his fortune. Tesla CEO Elon Musk, who reopened his California auto plant in defiance of state regulators and with the support of President Trump, saw a 48 percent increase in his wealth to $36 billion in just eight weeks as the stock market rebounded from its collapse. All told, the nation’s 620 billionaires now control $3.382 trillion, a 15 percent increase in two months.
Amazon ‘Stands in Solidarity with the Black Community’ in ‘Fight Against Systemic Racism’
2:52
E-commerce giant Amazon published a statement on Sunday stating that the company is “standing in solidarity with the Black community” in the “fight against systemic racism and injustice.”
Jeff Bezos’ e-commerce and tech giiant Amazon posted a statement recently in which the firm states: “The inequitable and brutal treatment of Black people in our country must stop.” The statement further goes on to say that the company stands with the Black community in the fight against “systemic racism and injustice,” as protests over the death of George Floyd rage across the United States.
However, despite claiming to stand with protesters, Amazon has a long history of working with law enforcement, specifically in the development of facial recognition technology. Breitbart News reported in July of 2019 after 15 months, a pilot test aiming to bring Amazon’s facial recognition system, called Rekognition, to the Orlando Police Department had ended. City police reportedly ended the test after multiple technical issues resulting in the technology failing to work correctly and a lack of resources on the police department’s part.
The software system is designed to utilize facial recognition algorithms to search for and track suspects in real-time. Amazon has previously claimed that the software was used to identify and rescue victims of human trafficking. Orlando police were meant to utilize the system by uploading photos of suspects to it, Rekognition would then search CCTV cameras for the suspect’s face.
The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) welcomed the announcement of the end of the project telling the Verge: “Congratulations to the Orlando Police Department for finally figuring out what we long warned — Amazon’s surveillance technology doesn’t work and is a threat to our privacy and civil liberties.” The ACLU found in a study conducted last July that Amazon’s facial recognition software incorrectly identified 28 members of Congress with images of people who had been arrested.
Breitbart News reported in February of 2019 that a study by MIT found that Amazon’s software has an error rate of approximately 31 percent when identifying the gender of images of women with dark skin while rival software developed by Kairos had an error rate of 22.5 percent and IBM’s software boasted a rate of just 17 percent. However, software from Amazon, Microsoft, and Kairos successfully identified images of light-skinned men 100 percent of the time.
Amazon is one of many companies that has expressed its support of protesters, including Twitter, Nike, Netflix, and Spotify.
Follow Breitbart News’ coverage of protests at our live feed here.
US unemployment claims approach 40 million since March
US billionaires increase wealth by $280 billion since March, as millions are unable to get unemployment benefits
US unemployment claims approach 40 million since March
22 May 2020
Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, who is rescinding a $2-an-hour hazard pay increase for his warehouse workers at the end of the month, led the pack, increasing his personal wealth by $34.6 billion since the onset of the pandemic. Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg was close behind, adding $25 billion to his fortune. Tesla CEO Elon Musk, who reopened his California auto plant in defiance of state regulators and with the support of President Trump, saw a 48 percent increase in his wealth to $36 billion in just eight weeks as the stock market rebounded from its collapse. All told, the nation’s 620 billionaires now control $3.382 trillion, a 15 percent increase in two months.
US billionaires increase wealth by $280 billion since March, as millions are unable to get unemployment benefits
“Never allow a crisis to go to waste,” said Rahm Emanuel, former investment banker, Chicago mayor and White House chief of staff to President Barack Obama, in response to the 2008 financial crisis. Emanuel and Obama led the reorganization of class relations in the United States, cutting social services, education, health and pensions, and accelerating a shift to temporary and low-paid work. As a result they created the largest stock market boom in history.
Today, this catchphrase is once again on the lips of the ruling
class. The largest financial and corporate
powerholders are seeking to use the global
health emergency to expand their wealth and
increase the exploitation of the working class.
The billionaires in the United States have increased their wealth by $282 billion since the mid-March stock decline, according to a new report by the Institute for Policy Studies. While more than one fifth of the American population is now unemployed, and millions are deprived of basic needs and confront an uncertain future, the fortunes of the ultra-rich have not only recovered, they are improving substantially.
Jeff Bezos and his girlfriend (AP Photo/Rafiq Maqbool, File)
Jeff Bezos’s fortune increased by $25 billion
between January 1 and April 15. Never in
history has any individual made so much
wealth so quickly. As the report noted, “this is
larger than the Gross Domestic Product of
Honduras, which was $23.9 billion in 2018.”
Eight billionaires, so-called “pandemic profiteers,” have increased their wealth, each, by over $1 billion during this time: Jeff Bezos (Amazon), MacKenzie Bezos (Amazon), Eric Yuan (Zoom), Steve Ballmer (Microsoft), John Albert Sobrato (Silicon Valley real estate), Elon Musk, Joshua Harris (Apollo, financial asset management) and Rocco Comisso (Mediacom, cable and internet).
Why, when 200,000 have died around the world and millions more lives are in jeopardy, are the ultra-rich profiting so fabulously?
First, the bailout package crafted and voted on unanimously by Republicans and Democrats has funneled wealth to the richest banks and corporations, while leaving peanuts for the working population.
The $2.2 trillion CARES Act gives only $550 billion to direct payments and extended unemployment, which most people have yet to receive. Of the remaining more than $1.7 trillion, $500 billion goes directly to bailing out major corporations. While $377 billion ostensibly goes to small businesses, most have not seen a penny, as the banks pocketed $10 billion in fees and larger companies largely consumed the available funds.
The CARES Act also contains within it an additional $173 billion in tax breaks to super-wealthy individuals and companies. For example, it allows households earning at least $500,000 a year to reduce their taxes by substantially increasing deductions from business losses and applying them to taxable money earned on the stock market.
All of this is on top of trillions being funneled
into the financial markets and corporate
coffers by the Federal Reserve.
Meanwhile, a study from the Pew Research Center finds that while over 10 million people applied for unemployment in March, only 29 percent of jobless Americans received any benefits that month. The report says that unemployed workers “face a hodgepodge of different state rules governing how they can qualify for benefits, how much they’ll get and how long they can collect them.”
Real unemployment has grown past 20 percent of the population. Over 26.5 million jobs have been lost, adding to the 7.1 million people who were already unemployed prior to the crisis.
Even when workers receive these benefits, they come, ultimately, at the expense of state and federal debt. Like in 2008, when state after state and city after city faced a budget crisis, so too, with COVID-19, will fiscal problems emerge. Who will pay when budgets are exceeded? As in Detroit, Michigan and Stockton, California in the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis, the ruling class will once again say, “There is no money” for basic social services such as education and clean water. Meanwhile, trillions are funneled to the ultra-wealthy.
A second reason the pandemic has been a bonanza for the ultra-rich is that it has intensified corporate consolidation, part-time and temporary work, and digital and physical automation.
Bloomberg writes: “Big Business Has All the Advantages in the Pandemic.” While most small businesses are on the rocks--deprived by larger firms of the small funding that was theoretically given to them in the CARES Act--many large corporations, such as Amazon, are carrying out a massive hiring spree. Walmart plans to hire 150,000 people by May; Amazon, 100,000; and Dollar Store, 25,000.
Because larger firms are more likely to have the capital not only to weather the crisis, but to dominate internet-based commerce, they will come out of the crisis with even greater domination of their market. In particularly hard-hit industries, such as the oil and gas sector, the giant companies like Chevron and ExxonMobil see the crisis as an opportunity to purchase their smaller competitors.
The Financial Times likewise writes that “Covid-19 will only increase automation anxiety” as companies “pandemic-proof their operations.” Capitalism has a natural tendency toward automation, which in the long term breeds economic crises and joblessness. Mark Muro, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, says COVID-19 will spur a “surge of labour-replacing technology,” as automated cashiers, cars, logistic robots and automated assembly lines replace workers. Again, the largest companies will emerge on top because they are the ones that can afford this automated overhaul.
Capitalism’s fundamental trajectory—toward increasing automation, temporary and part-time work, corporate consolidation, ever increasing inequality and financial bubbles—will intensify. The result, in turn, will be an ever more staggering concentration of wealth in the hands of the few.
The socialist response to the COVID-19 crisis demands that this mass of wealth be confiscated. The major companies which dominate our lives cannot be run for the private profit of a handful of billionaires who seek to squeeze the working class, literally, to death. They must be placed under the social and democratic control of the working class.
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