The End of Wealth Worship?

Last week Payless Shoes announced it was shutting down for good. The retail sector continues to get hit and nobody really knows how it will end. The culprit is Amazon and its narcissist boss Jeff Bezos. Last week also saw the demise of Amazon's plan to build a "second headquarters" in Queens New York.

Kara Swisher published in the New York Times "Amazon Isn’t Interested in Making the World a Better Place." Swisher demolishes the myths behind the Amazon deal.

"What it is, to use a Big Apple term, is meh, yet another indication that the dulcet attractions of tech have lost their charm for many and that the business — which has been this country’s most innovative and promising and often its most inspirational — is just that: a business, like any other, out for itself and itself alone, and most definitely not changing the world for the better."

Swisher points out the problems with the proposed deal:

"It cut too close to home for many, who wondered why, in an era when all kinds of public services are being cut and the city’s infrastructure is crumbling, a trillion-dollar corporation was getting so much. When it was revealed exactly how much — $3 billion in tax breaks after largely secret negotiations between civil potentates like Gov. Andrew Cuomo and faceless Amazon execs — the situation was ripe for disruption."

And of course Amazon's promise of 25,000 jobs was probably exaggerated.

Swisher finally sums up the larger problem:

"But no one wanted to end up like San Francisco — which has become a modern hellscape even as internet companies build their airy HQs and become ever richer. There, tax giveaways only exacerbated income inequality and offered no solutions."

The scandal that big corporations can get away with paying little or no taxes has to end. Maybe this is the beginning of the end.