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Daily-Opinion
Don't Fall for the Tax Scam Jeff Bezos Is Trying to Peddle
The Republican Party and right-wing media think it’s perfectly fine to rip the financial and political guts out of their own nation and turn its people against each other if it lets them keep a few extra bucks.
May 22, 2026
The fourth richest man in the world, Jeff Bezos, told CNBC earlier this week that he doesn’t think people making $70,000 a year should pay a penny in income taxes. For him, that’s a threefer.
First, it gets millions of Americans on the “we shouldn’t ever pay any income taxes at all” train that’s been rolling for billionaires ever since Reagan first gutted our tax code, leading to an explosion of the morbidly rich.
Second, it gets those same average, tax-paying voters on board with Bezos’ second claim, that America’s debt problem isn’t because we’re taxing too little but because we’re “spending too much.”
If we just got rid of — or privatized/profitized — all those pesky “socialist” programs like Medicaid, food stamps, free public highways, fire and police departments, Social Security, food and drug regulation and inspection, air traffic control and TSA, housing subsidies, Pell grants, free public schools, etc., then even billionaires could safely live tax-free.
Third, it means that Bezos will be able to reduce his own labor costs, because the marketplace in which pay rates exist are always exclusively reacting to “after tax” dollars.
Here’s how it works: If Bezos is paying an Amazon programmer $70,000 a year and that programmer then pays $12,000 a year in income taxes (his example, only for “a nurse in Queens”), their after-tax take-home pay is $58,000. That $58K is what they’re actually living on, and Bezos knows it.
So, if their income tax payment goes away, Bezos can drop their pay from $70K to $58K and they won’t notice any change at all in their lifestyle. And Bezos gets to keep the difference.
But there are even more fundamental problems with Jeff’s little tax scam. Back in 1904, Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Homes Jr famously said, “Taxes are the price we pay for a civilized society.” He was right, and it works in two dimensions.
The main one is that taxes represent the money government must collect to cover the cost of the services its citizens have demanded of their elected representatives. With the exception of emergencies like the Civil War and World War II, the money coming into government and the money spent out should pretty much be in balance. And, with the exception of the period since 1981, they historically have been.
When Ronald Reagan first put into place the GOP’s infamous “Two Santas” strategy of running up the debt during Republican presidencies and squealing about the national debt to block legislation during Democratic presidencies, he broke with an understanding and tradition that dated back to George Washington’s presidency.
Reagan tripled what was left of our WWII national debt, which Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy, LBJ, Nixon, Ford, and Carter had all paid down to a mere $800 billion by 1981. He deficit-spent like crazy, producing an illusion of good times because of the stimulus of all that purchasing, and left us a $2.4 trillion national debt when he handed the reins of government over to GHW Bush.
While both Democratic Presidents Clinton and Obama tried to go along with the GOP and balance or near-balance budgets during their presidencies, the Two Santas spending of GW Bush and Trump has exploded our national debt to $39 trillion, about the same as the sum of all economic activity in the country (our GDP).
As I noted a few weeks ago, if we weren’t paying a trillion dollars a year in just interest on that debt, we could have a national healthcare system and free college education right now.
But keeping us from having nice things — from healthcare to education to housing to an electrified grid — is one of the main goals of the GOP’s Two Santas deficit-spending program.
Each of those programs has to be paid for with tax dollars, and morbidly rich people who are obsessed with making more, more, more want them all killed off.
“We can’t afford it because of the national debt!” is their favorite mantra. “Democrats must shoot their Santa of Social Security and other programs in the face by ‘cutting spending’ before we can talk about taxes!”
The simple reality is that income taxes are largely irrelevant to the lives of working class people. If they got a big tax cut, as noted earlier, their employers would simply reduce their pay to make up for it, or at least freeze it until inflation caught up. If their taxes go up, on the other hand, pressure falls on employers to raise gross (before-tax) pay enough to keep take-home pay where it had been.
Tax increases on working class people, in other words, lead to pay increases, while tax cuts on working class people inevitably lead to pay freezes or cuts, as the history of every tax increase since 1913 and every tax cut since Reagan’s first in 1981 proves.
On the other hand, the rules are completely different for the morbidly rich. If they pay less in taxes, they keep more money for themselves because they’re generally the ones determining how much they take out of their businesses or trust funds, not some employer. When taxes go up, they have less to throw into their money bins.
Which brings up the second and really most important dimension of taxation: it’s supposed to incentivize behaviors society wants and discourage behaviors that harm the rest of us.
When we wanted people to buy cars to increase the mobility of Americans and jump-start the car industry after WWII, we made the interest on car loans tax-deductible. Ditto for house purchases. When the auto industry matured and there was no longer a reason to encourage new car purchases, we did away with that tax deduction.
The things people call “loopholes,” in other words, should be carefully designed to encourage behaviors we want, and historically have been.
We want companies to do research and design to develop new products and make our economy vibrant, so we offer R&D tax deductions. We don’t want companies “making money” by manipulating their own stock prices, so we attach a huge penalty to companies buying back their own stock (or we did until Reagan legalized this form of stock price manipulation in 1983).
And tax rates should be high enough to discourage the kind of hoarding and other antisocial behavior we don’t want rich people engaging in. Prior to Reagan shattering our tax system, people at the top of the economic pyramid generally weren’t in a bizarre competition to amass and display conspicuous levels of wealth.
Certainly, there were dynastic families and people who had fancy houses in the Hamptons, but by and large people with control over their own income (the CEO class) maxxed out their annual take-home around $2 or $3 million because above that the 74-90% tax rate began to bite. The Hearst Castle was the exception that proved the rule; most of the “wealthy” lived in nice suburbs like Beverly Hills and Long Island.
Republicans have been playing cynical tax games with the American public ever since Jude Wanniski invented his Two Santas strategy for the GOP back in the 1970s, and our media generally plays along both to keep in good Republican graces and also because so few people (including reporters) actually understand taxes and taxation theory.
There’s a popular internet meme where an American asks a European, “How can you be happy when you pay so much in taxes?”
The European replies by calmly listing everything those taxes pay for — free health care, free college, inexpensive childcare, quality public transit, a strong social safety net — and then says, “You have to pay a billionaire and his markup for all of those things; we get them for free.”
Similarly, years ago I was up late one night watching, as I recall, Bloomberg News on a hotel TV in Asia. The American host was interviewing a very wealthy German businessman at a conference in Singapore.
Amidst questions about the business climate and the conference, the host asked the German businessman what tax rate he was “suffering under” in his home country. As I recall, the businessman said, “A bit over 60 percent, when everything is included.”
“How can you handle that?” asked the host, incredulous.
The German shrugged his shoulders and moved the conversation to another topic.
A few minutes later, the American reporter, still all wound up by the tax question, again asked the businessman how he could possibly live in a country with such a high tax rate on very wealthy and successful people. Again, the German deferred and changed the subject.
The reporter went for a third try. “Why don’t you lead a revolt against those high taxes?” he asked, his tone implying the businessman was badly in need of some good old American rebellion-making.
The German businessman paused for a long moment and then leaned forward, putting his elbows on his knees, his clasped hands in front of him pointing at the reporter as if in prayer.
He stared at the man for another long moment and then, in the tone of voice an adult uses to correct a spoiled child, said simply, “I don’t want to be a rich man in a poor country.”
There are a few wealthy Americans, like Tom Steyer, who understand this. But the billionaires and foreign oligarchs who fund the Republican Party and right-wing media think it’s perfectly fine to rip the financial and political guts out of their own nation and turn its people against each other if it lets them keep a few extra bucks.
And Jeff Bezos is just the most recent to publicly try to run this scam on us.
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Israel: The Country Whose Actions Never Represent Itself
As a country that invests heavily in public relations and presenting itself in a positive light, Israel often claims its representation lies in anything but its own actions.
May 22, 2026
On Wednesday, Israel’s Minister of National Security, Itamar Ben-Gvir, publicly shared videos of the mistreatment of the activists of the Global Sumud Flotilla, illegally intercepted by Israeli forces earlier this week in international waters, including in broad daylight.
In addition to condemnation by representatives of several countries, Ben Gvir also faced internal criticism. Israel’s Prime Minister himself, Benjamin Netanyahu, expressed his disapproval by saying that “[t]he way that Minister Ben-Gvir dealt with the flotilla activists is not in line with Israel's values and norms.”
This is where I invite you to pause the unfolding story. Let’s put what we are seeing in other words: Israel’s Prime Minister, who has an arrest warrant by the International Criminal Court for war crimes and crimes against humanity, is telling one of his ministers that his treatment of illegally captured activists doesn’t match Israel’s values and norms. Netanyahu says that after congratulating the Israeli army for intercepting the flotilla just days ago. According to him, this kind of abuse is not what Israel is about; Ben-Gvir, his own minister, should not form our image of Israel.
A question comes to mind: If it is not his own government official's, whose actions, according to Netanyahu himself, should we consider as we form an image of Israel’s values and norms?
For the ones willing to listen, Israel’s actions have spoken louder than any of its hasbara statements and have represented its values and norms very clearly.
Could it be when the Israeli soldiers continuously brag about their looting in Gaza on social media, when armed settlers—protected by the Israeli army—increasingly torch Palestinian houses in the West Bank, or when “Death to Arabs!” is being shouted with pride by the marchers on Jerusalem Day each year?
Would any state policy exemplify those values and norms? Like what we can read in the multiple reports describing systematic torture and sexual violence in Israeli detention (reports by the United Nations, B’Tselem, and Amnesty International)? And if someone argues that the Israeli government is not in fact showing what has become normalized through this specific state policy, it is difficult not to wonder what its values and norms have become when the detention of prison guards, caught brutally sexually abusing a Palestinian detainee on camera, is protested by fellow Israelis, when they are welcomed to Israel TV stations, and finally acquitted of any crime?
This is what this story illustrates: While Israel claims to represent many (for example, the global Jewish community), conveniently, no one seems able to represent Israel itself. Because if official state policies, military instructions and actions, public demonstrations, and the conduct of prison guards supported by the people do not represent Israel’s values and norms, the notion of Israel’s representation has become nothing more than what we find in political dystopias: just words we are supposed to accept.
The words become both the representation and the represented: The world’s most moral army is so because that is how it describes itself; there is no forced starvation because those responsible deny it; the abuse of the Global Sumud Flotilla crew is an exception because the war criminal in charge says he does not approve of it.
This is how simple Israel’s hasbara has become. And if it purely relies on the credulousness of its audience, who is left in that audience by now?
It is clear to see that this Orwellian reality is cracking. US citizens’ support for Israel is at an all-time low. The petition to suspend European Union-Israeli trade reached over a million signatures. Even something as seemingly unshakable as Europe’s fascination with Eurovision saw five countries and many viewers boycott the show due to Israel’s participation. The Government Pension Fund of Norway, the world’s largest sovereign wealth fund, divested from 11 companies, including Israeli banks, because of Israel’s actions in Gaza and the West Bank. For the ones willing to listen, Israel’s actions have spoken louder than any of its hasbara statements and have represented its values and norms very clearly.
Ultimately, what Netanyahu’s comment shows is a complete disconnect from reality. And perhaps that is the ultimate representation of how Israel and its supporters are left to operate.
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The US Fails Young People by Mobilizing for War, Not Jobs
A country is not secure simply because it can strike targets, protect bases, or surge forces across oceans. It is secure when its people can see a future worth defending.
May 22, 2026
Washington usually measures American decline in external terms: China’s rise, Russia’s revisionism, strained alliances, and military crises in the Middle East. But one of the clearest warnings is coming from inside the United States. In 2025, only 43% of Americans ages 15 to 34 said it was a good time to find a job where they lived, 21 points below Americans 55 and older. In no other surveyed country was the generational gap this wide.
That finding should unsettle a country that is still speaking the language of primacy. Young Americans are not turning gloomy because they have forgotten how to be optimistic. They are reading the economy in front of them. Youth unemployment stood at 9.5% in April. Renter cost burdens hit a record 22.7 million households in 2024. The share of first-time home buyers fell to a record-low 21%, while the median first-time buyer’s age rose to 40. For a generation told that education, discipline, and work would translate into stability, the bargain looks broken.
This is not only a domestic story. It is also a foreign policy failure, because budgets reveal what a government treats as urgent. The Defense Department’s 2026 request totaled $961 billion, among the largest inflation-adjusted requests of the past half century. Additional military-related funding has pushed “national defense” spending beyond $1 trillion. The point is not that every dollar spent on the Pentagon could be mechanically converted into a job, an apartment, or a mortgage. The point is that Washington still knows how to mobilize at scale—but most reliably when the beneficiaries are weapons programs, contractors, and permanent military infrastructure.
The war with Iran has made that imbalance harder to ignore. By May, the US campaign had cost an estimated $29 billion, including operations and equipment repair or replacement. The conflict has also disrupted energy flows through one of the world’s most important corridors, raising the risk that households already squeezed by rent, debt, insurance, and food costs will face still more pressure. For young workers, “foreign policy” is not abstract when it comes back as higher prices, lower confidence, and another delay in leaving home.
If Washington continues to protect an empire more energetically than it protects the next generation’s prospects, the damage will not remain hidden in surveys.
Washington often treats these costs as unfortunate side effects of leadership. They are better understood as evidence of an outdated model of security. A country is not secure simply because it can strike targets, protect bases, or surge forces across oceans. It is secure when its people can see a future worth defending. A state that can finance escalation faster than housing, debt relief, or public investment teaches its younger citizens a bleak lesson: Their insecurity is manageable, but imperial credibility is an emergency.
A serious foreign policy would start from that recognition. It would pursue diplomacy with Iran rather than convert each crisis into a test of dominance. It would restore the congressional role in decisions of war and peace. It would subject military spending to the same moral and fiscal scrutiny imposed on social programs. And it would treat economic security at home as part of national security, not as an afterthought to be discussed after the next supplemental defense bill.
This is not a call for withdrawal from the world. It is a call to abandon the habit of confusing militarization with responsibility. The United States can cooperate, mediate, trade, provide humanitarian assistance, and support climate resilience without treating armed escalation as the default proof of seriousness. In fact, a foreign policy built around restraint would be more credible abroad precisely because it would be more defensible at home.
The warning from young Americans is not just that the job market feels weak. It is that the future feels rationed. If Washington continues to protect an empire more energetically than it protects the next generation’s prospects, the damage will not remain hidden in surveys. It will appear in politics, institutions, and the country’s declining ability to persuade anyone—including its own citizens—that American power still serves a public purpose. The real measure of decline is not only what rivals do to the United States. It is what the United States keeps choosing to do to itself.
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Washington Won't Save Us; Our Neighbors Might
Why the midterms will be won or lost at the community level—and what that means for how we organize now.
May 22, 2026
A recent political event at a local community center left me smiling. A Latina special educator teacher running for state legislature had gathered a room full of supporters. Labor union members, religious leaders, political activists, family, and friends showed up in the late afternoon this spring to help her launch her campaign. The fundraising pitch was co-led by a very exuberant trans performer and a buttoned-up county prosecutor, filling the space with laughter and donations.
It was just one event, but it reminded me that building grassroots power goes hand in hand with building community. Both will be needed if the upcoming midterm elections are to be the pivot we need. This is the time grassroots power can stop fascism and begin the long but hopeful journey to an inclusive, fair, and sustainable world.
What Has Community Got to Do With It?
We are bombarded by news of the disastrous policies coming out of a billionaire-led administration, following the marching orders of the tech bros; the Heritage Foundation’s corporate agenda; and, according to conjecture, such foreign leaders as Russian President Vladimir Putin and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. It’s enough to create chronic panic.
Less often discussed are the victories of the people working together in their neighborhoods and towns to push back on Immigration and Customs Enforcement crackdowns and AI data complexes, to stand up for voting rights, and to fight to get food and healthcare to those cut off from these basic needs. These grassroots groups are also providing essential backing to the elected officials who are standing up to the Trump regime’s worst abuses.
History shows that fascism can overrun a society when people are fractured and isolated. We can counter powerlessness when we act with others where we live.
These victories don’t come from national Democratic Party leaders or celebrities. They come from ordinary people who show up; work together; and build the trust, relationships, and coordination that make further action possible.
The Midterms Pivot
This grassroots power will make the difference in the upcoming midterm elections, which could in turn determine whether fascism strengthens its hold on American life.
Poll after poll is telling us that growing majorities of Americans oppose President Donald Trump’s policies, and that his disapproval rating is reaching unprecedented levels. Still, there are strong headwinds for those working for change.
Funding for progressive grassroots work is falling short, according to a recent analysis by the Movement Voters Project. Meanwhile, the Trump administration is rolling out executive orders and court cases that can discourage voting by those who might oppose him, removing citizens from the voting rolls, raising false claims about election integrity, and putting bureaucratic roadblocks in the way of casting a ballot.
And then it got worse. On April 29, 2026, the US Supreme Court ruling in the Louisiana v. Callais case struck a near-fatal blow to the Voting Rights Act. After years of struggle for equal voting rights for African Americans, this case threatens to fracture the power of Black communities, diluting their ability to elect members of Congress and state and local officials who truly represent them. According to Black Voters Matter, the ruling threatens to create an additional 19 entrenched seats for Republicans in Congress, and 191 entrenched Republican legislative seats.
But here is what the ruling also did: It relocated the battle to exactly the terrain where organized communities are strongest—the state and local level. The people with the most power to determine what happens in November are not in Washington. They are wherever you are, deciding whether to show up.
How we organize locally could make the difference.
Building power means inviting in people who have not been active until now. It means building an agenda for a better, more inclusive future, and making political gatherings a time for community building as well as for carrying out effective strategies. It means prioritizing collaboration across races and identities and issues to build power for the common good. Now is the time—during primary season, when we have the most leverage.
Here’s what that looks like:
We Need to Keep Voting Accessible, Safe, and Fair. Restore Voting Rights
Elections are run by state and local officials, not by the federal government. The work varies by region, but wherever you are, you can work with your local, county, and state officials to make district maps fair, to ensure polling stations are secure and that eligible voters have unfettered access to the polls, and that the election process is free from bias and intimidation.
The Callais decision makes this work tougher, but it also is unleashing the unstoppable energy of those who have been excluded too often and for too long.
Organize Sustained Grassroots Power. Candidates Are Not the Whole Story
Elected officials work for us. We have the right to set the agenda, and find and elect candidates who will carry out our priorities. And we have the right to hold incumbents accountable. For the vast majority of us who lack billions of dollars, building power means organizing: creating collaborations among existing groups, creating new groups when needed, affiliating with regional and national organizations when appropriate. It means building connections and power year round, not only during election season.
National groups that are effective in building grassroots power include the Movement Voters Project, which supports grassroots groups building progressive power, especially in swing states, year round, not only during election season. The Working Families Party and the Democratic Socialists of America, which played key roles in organizing and mobilizing the massive grassroots campaign that won the New York mayoral election for Zohran Mamdani. Your local Democratic Party might—or might not—be helpful.
Elect Fighters!
This is the right time, during the primaries, to challenge incumbents to take strong positions supporting voting rights and the interests of all working people in our communities, not the corporations and billionaires. Ask candidates tough questions when they are on home visits or campaigning. Research their voting records. Hold candidates forums.
If the incumbent is caving in to corporate interests or racist gerrymandering, taking money from American Israel Public Affairs Committee or Wall Street PACs, or failing to fight for poor and working class people, support strong candidates who challenge them. In the general election, we may need to support any candidate who will oppose MAGA, but in the primaries, we should press for the leadership that will best serve us.
Spread Stories of Power, Not Just Fear
Many of us live with the daily drama of Trump’s latest impulses. It’s hard to avoid. But we need to remember that there is so much more to our nation’s story. Research and share news about the progressive office holders and community organizing that is making life better for everyday people. What you share on social media makes a difference. Supply your elected officials with tangible examples of successful policies to help them see a path forward. Write an editorial or letter to the editor of your local newspaper or in your group’s newsletter about wins. Mamdani’s recent successes are great examples—offering free day care for 2-year-olds, and increasing the stock of affordable housing with funding proposed through a tax on luxury second homes.
People need to see what grassroots power looks like, and so do our elected representatives. Allowing the outrages of the MAGA Regime to occupy all of our attention makes us think and feel like victims, preparing for the next blow, rather than embodying our rights to be powerful protagonists. We forget that we can get things done and that we deserve better.
Gather With Others
History shows that fascism can overrun a society when people are fractured and isolated. We can counter powerlessness when we act with others where we live. People want to make a difference—many are just waiting for the right invitation. Create spaces that foster belonging, a topic I explore in my recent zine, “Community As Strategy.” Combine the hard work with joy-filled gatherings. Hold dance parties, picnics, or fun runs. Turn protests into parades.
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We actually do have a path forward. We can defeat fascism before the remaining institutions of American democracy are corrupted and dismembered. We can do that best by joining together locally and finally offering Americans what so many want—universal healthcare, peace, protection for our natural heritage, an economy that works for working people. We have majority support for many of these positions, and the creativity and energy to make them a reality. Together, we have the power when we organize where we live.
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