Amazon’s Biggest Rival Isn’t Walmart, It’s Congress
Amazon.com has grown its monopoly with substantial help from federal, state and local governments. It has enjoyed billions in public subsidies – nearly $4.3 billion according to Good Jobs First’s Amazon Tracker – and tax breaks worth tens of billions, according to the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy. Now, as Congress tries to force Amazon to change its harmful business practices, Amazon is out peddling desperate lies in an attempt to retain its dominance.
Amazon’s latest propaganda campaign is in response to the American Innovation and Choice Online Act, introduced by Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) and Rep David Cicilline (D-RI). The bill helps create a level playing field for small businesses, which often suffer under Amazon’s practices of favoring itself and other big companies.
“Who do you trust? The largest online retailer in America with a demonstrated record of stiffing small businesses and lying about this bill’s impact, or small businesses themselves?” a spokesperson for Klobuchar said, according to CNN. “We’ll take the side of small business and consumers, not the side of big tech monopolists.”
Read more of the story at The Street.
The Institute for Local Self-Reliance’s Stacy Mitchell broke down Amazon’s desperate lies, and explains the reality: the bill is good for sellers, Prime members and the workers who toil in Amazon’s notoriously dangerous warehouses.