On Sept. 5, Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT) introduced the Stop BEZOS Act, a bill that would enact a tax on large corporations such as Amazon and Walmart equivalent to the federal benefits their low-income workers receive. Sanders and co-author Rep. Mo Khanna (D-CA) argue that the current system forces taxpayers to subsidize corporations that could easily pay their workers a living wage, while opponents argue that the bill would have little impact on large corporations but present grave consequences for small businesses. Is corporate overreliance on welfare an issue, and would legislation like the Stop BEZOS Act be a reasonable method of curbing it?  

Dean David Weil (Heller) 

Senator Sanders' and Rep. Khanna's proposed Stop BEZOS Act seeks to address a fundamental problem in the US: the fact that millions of working people have seen little real earnings growth for decades.  Over the last year, real earnings for non-supervisory production and other workers did not increase despite significant growth in the economy as a whole.  That continued an almost thirty-year trend of real earnings stagnation for more than half of all US households.  The real problem to address are the causes of growing earnings inequality and its impacts on the economic and political health of our society. Addressing inequality requires more fundamental and comprehensive public policies than found in the proposed law.

David Weil is the Dean of the Heller School for Social Policy and Management. He previously led the Wage and Hour Division of the U.S. Department of Labor under President Obama.

Prof. Daniel Bergstresser (IBS) 

Income inequality and the increasing concentration of economic and political power are real problems. To the extent that Bernie Sanders draws attention to these problems he is playing a useful role. But I worry that the Stop BEZOS Act would be impossible to implement at any reasonable cost. The monitoring and compliance aspects would be difficult and extremely expensive to work out. And if you did charge ahead and try to implement the policy it would very likely hurt the people that you might be hoping to help. Finally, the proposed act is also ad hominem, being named after Bezos himself, in a way that sets a bad precedent for future legislation.

Sagie Tvizer ’19

Any corporate reliance on welfare is an issue. There is no such thing as “overreliance.” The Stop BEZOS Act is an exceptionally reasonable attempt to curb this exploitation by calling attention to an otherwise forgotten issue. The message of Stop BEZOS is clear: taxpayers are being wronged. They are subsidizing selfish behavior by corporations, and corporations are designed to be selfish. The Sanders wing is demanding that something be done to address this wrong and create a an equitable society, rather than accept the premise that our society is meaningfully meritocratic. This bill shifts the ethereal ‘political conversation,’ if only for a moment, in a positive direction. The Kavanaugh hearings are characterized by drama, and necessarily so. From my understanding, reputable political commentators and policymakers have dismissed the Stop BEZOS Act as unreasonable. That said this bill demands tangible counter-proposals which can be negotiated and are the basis of much needed conversations within our government. Even if this particular attempt at momentarily shifting media attention to a specific issue long enough to actualize some progressive change, there will surely be more. At the very least, I think there ought to be.

Sagie Tvizer ’19 is the vice president of finance for Brandeis Academic Debate and Speech Society.

Eitan Garfield ’20

The STOP BEZOS Act that Senator Sanders introduced clearly to redirect the profits of a company that is now valued higher than Apple Inc. is necessary legislation for corporations that often mistreat their workers. By instituting an 100% tax on government benefits that workers receive, companies of more than 500 employees hand would be forced to support their employees of lower income brackets, and allow the government to invest in programs that could further improve quality of life. The idea that it would only affect companies of more than 500 employees would lessen the impact on small businesses and affect larger companies in the tax they pay especially for companies like Amazon that function largely in the American market. 

Miriam Krugman ’20

The Stop BEZOS Act is a piece of legislation that places a check on large corporations like Amazon, which treats their workers in an absolutely unacceptable manner. This bill brings to the fore, in an official way, an issue that many people choose to ignore as they may support these large corporations by buying from them. Unfortunately, I do not know how effective this bill would be with regard to large corporations worth $1 trillion, however I think it is a step toward prioritizing workers rights and checking large corporations through means of taxation, a necessary step if we want to see meaningful change in this realm.

Eitan Garfield ’20

The STOP BEZOS Act that Senator Sanders introduced clearly to redirect the profits of a company that is now valued higher than Apple Inc. is necessary legislation for corporations that often mistreat their workers. By instituting an 100% tax on government benefits that workers receive, companies of more than 500 employees hand would be forced to support their employees of lower income brackets, and allow the government to invest in programs that could further improve quality of life. The idea that it would only affect companies of more than 500 employees would lessen the impact on small businesses and affect larger companies in the tax they pay especially for companies like Amazon that function largely in the American market.

Mara Khayter ’19 

I don’t quite understand how small businesses would be affected by a bill that specifies that attempts to affect only megacorporations. Perhaps they would be affected in the sense that the apparent “small businesses” are branched from Amazon or Walmart. It’s really very simply a matter of specification of what businesses will be affected, which is not the focus of the bill, nor do I think the concern over small businesses is real or justified. My initial response is to agree with taxation of megacorporations because of the nature of megacorporations and the fact that they literally do not pay their workers enough to survive. The way that this problem is being tackled seems obtuse-- I wonder why there can’t simply be a way to ensure that corporations pay their workers a liveable wage, instead of creating a system of compensation that does the same thing without being directly justified by the premise of creating a liveable wage for all.