OPINION:
Sounding a lot like socialist Bernie Sanders, Fox News host Tucker Carlson went after Amazon, Walmart and other big businesses who consistently pay their employees near-poverty level wages while they rake in record-high earnings.
Pointing out that while huge numbers of their employees are receiving government benefits like food stamps, Carlson shamed Amazon’s Jeff Bezos, the richest man in America, for receiving what is tantamount to a federal subsidy for his workers so he doesn’t have to raise their wages.
Jeff Bezos is the richest man in the world. Many of his employees are so poor, you’re paying their welfare benefits. And he’s not the only tech billionaire offloading his payroll costs onto taxpayers. This is an indefensible scam. Why is only Bernie talking about it? pic.twitter.com/PdXBfQsHsq
— Tucker Carlson (@TuckerCarlson) August 31, 2018
“A huge number of Amazon workers are so poorly paid, they qualify for federal welfare benefits. Nearly 1-3 Amazon employees in Arizona, for example, was on food stamps last year. Jeff Bezos isn’t paying his workers enough to eat, so you made up the difference with your tax dollars. Next time you see Jeff Bezos, make certain that he says ‘thank you.’”
So what gives here? Is Tucker embracing the Socialist Democrat agenda of Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and running head-first off the conservative reservation?
Absolutely not.
First off, for anyone who has followed Carlson’s career, you would have a clear understanding of his ideology which leans much more toward a Libertarian doctrine rather than a strict, Chamber of Commerce-style establishment GOP set of principles.
Don’t let the old bow tie fool you into thinking Carlson is a country club Fortune 500 kind of guy. He is (like all conservatives should be) in full support of free markets, not big business. And anyone who has been paying attention to the American economy for the past 150 years knows that big business hates the free market. Free markets are bad for business because it allows for competition. Big business loves big government intervention as long as it intervenes in favor of their business and it helps out their interests.
This is why GE embraced the gree energy push from the Obama administration. They made a ton of money on all those compact fluorescent light bulbs and then the LED light bulbs once we all learned that the fluorescent ones sucked.
Much that is wrong with the conservative movement can be traced to the unholy marriage forged between the Republican Party and big business interests. We embraced the idea that big business was important to the American economy instead of recognizing that the real strength was the free market.
Carlson is not advocating big government control of industries and wages in the way Sanders and Ocasio-Cortez are. To the contrary, he is advocating the government get out of the business of subsidizing major corporation’s payrolls. Why should Bezos pay his employees a wage that allows them to feed themselves when the government will step in and do it for him?
Add to the mix the fact that we’ve seen these corporations and the scions who run them lurch to the far left in how they run their businesses, affect our culture and fund their favorite politicians and it’s pretty reasonable for a conservative to question how American taxpayers are enriching these individuals and their companies.
And, as usual, Carlson is leading the way by asking those very questions.
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