Billionaire Jeff Bezos lashed out at the Biden administration again Sunday, blaming it for rising inflation that "hurts the least affluent."
In a tweet Sunday, Bezos, the founder of Amazon.com Inc. $(AMZN)$, said "the administration tried hard to inject even more stimulus into an already over-heated, inflationary economy and only Manchin saved them from themselves. Inflation is a regressive tax that most hurts the least affluent. Misdirection doesn't help the country."
The comment came in a reply thread to a tweet from President Joe Biden which cited the rising budget deficit under the Trump administration, and said "reducing the deficit is one of the main ways we can ease inflationary pressures."
With inflation at a 40-year high Fed Chairman Jerome Powell admitted last week that the central bank acted too slowly to stem inflation, and Cleveland Fed President Loretta Mester suggested a 75-basis-point rate hike is back on the table for September if inflation isn't moving down by then.
Bezos' remarks Sunday came after a sharp reply to another tweet by Biden on Friday.
"You want to bring down inflation? Let's make sure the wealthiest corporations pay their fair share," Biden tweeted, without mentioning Amazon or any other company.
"The newly created Disinformation Board should review this tweet, or maybe they need to form a new Non Sequitur Board instead. Raising corp taxes is fine to discuss. Taming inflation is critical to discuss. Mushing them together is just misdirection," replied Bezos, who has a net worth of $137 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.
A report earlier this year said Amazon avoided paying about $5.2 billion in corporate income taxes in 2021 as it reported record profits. The report by the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy found that Amazon paid about $2.1 billion in federal taxes, an effective tax rate of about 6%.
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