Hi, I'm CNBC producer Katie Kramer. Today on a super-sized Squawk Pod, Jeff Bezos from Amazon to rocket ships to the Washington Post and everything in between. Andrew Ross Sorkin sits down with Bezos at Blue Origin to discuss wealth.
I pay billions of dollars in taxes and it's a... again, if people want me to pay more billions, right? Then let's have that debate.
Productivity. We live in the wealthiest country in the world. America is the greatest country in the world. We have more entrepreneurial dynamism here than anywhere else in the world. This is the best time to be alive in America.
I've worked with every president since Bill Clinton. And I hope to work with, you know, the next couple of presidents too if they'll have me.
We're in a phase where every experiment is getting funded. The good ideas are getting funded and the bad ideas are getting funded.
That is coming up. It's Wednesday, May 20th. Squawk Pod begins right now.
Good morning everybody. Welcome to Squawk Box right here on CNBC. I'm Becky Quick along with Joe Kernen and Andrew Ross Sorkin. And hi Andrew.
Hey there. Look at that. How are you? Nice to see you from afar. Is that a rocket ship behind you?
Nice to see you from afar.
Rocket ships set up where we are, I think, in just a moment, but it's pretty extraordinary. We've got a big show coming for you in just a little bit.
Andrew, set us up. Tell us what we're all about today.
So we are... Hey, Becky. We are here at Blue Origin's Rocket Park. This is along Florida's Space Coast, and this is a huge campus where Blue Origin manufactures and tests its New Glenn orbital rockets, also the Blue Moon lunar landers. The Kennedy Space Center is right next door. And our special guest this morning is Blue Origin founder and of course the founder of Amazon, Jeff Bezos. And we're going to talk a lot about space this morning. We'll talk about his plans for the moon and future space exploration. But we're also going to talk about so much else that's going on in the headlines right now. We're going to talk about wealth in America and wealth inequality and all the wealth taxes and what's happening in New York with the mansion tax and what's happening in California and in so many other places. We'll talk about the Washington Post. We're going to talk about Amazon, his relationship with the president. We'll talk of course about the AI revolution. His new project Prometheus, which is his AI efforts around robotics. And yes, we'll also talk about the economy and whether he sees any comparisons to the dot-com bubble. He has lived through it all. If there's one person who I've wanted to talk to for a very, very long time about all of this and more, it is Jeff Bezos. And we're going to spend a lot of time with him right here on Squawk.
So, I mean, you know, talk about a few things like the Washington Post and the moon. I mean, it just... the scope... honestly we're going to go... we're going to hit everything. There is so much to discuss with him right now and he is in so many ways at the center of it all. And by the way, there's so much interest in space right now. SpaceX getting ready to file for its IPO. We're all waiting for that filing as well. That's going to have a big impact on the valuation ultimately of this company here. There's been some reported talk of bringing in outside money for the first time to Blue Origin. Thus far, he's been financing all of that himself. So, there's just... there's so many different places that we're going to get into.
I feel like I could listen for about four or five hours from that list of things that are going through. So, I feel like it's going to be jam-packed. No matter how long you're talking to him, it's going to be jam-packed to get through all of those topics. Andrew, we're going to try. We're going to try our best.
Do you think he'll ever say no comment or you feel like he's just ready to bare his soul today? Andrew, I think you're going to get a lot.
You know, I think he wants to talk about everything and I think he's prepared to talk about everything and we're going to try to get into it all. I mean there's just so much going on in terms of just the economic piece of it but there's also the policy and politics piece of it and there's the sort of cultural zeitgeist piece of what's happening with wealth in this country that I think we all want to understand the way he feels about it. He's often considered sort of an avatar for the wealthiest in a way. His name is almost in the headlines almost every day in that regard. So I think you know we're going to get into all of those component parts of our story this morning. I would like more wealth in the country. But that's just me. But it is nuanced. You're right. But in general let's go with more wealth.
Andrew, remember what... and Becky, but remember what he said about AI comparing it. Historically the only thing he could come up with was electricity, something that could be so transformative.
Yeah. I mean, look at what... how electricity... wasn't that him, Andrew, that said... I think it was... he's talked about it as electricity. He's talked about it as like fire. I mean, talk about something even more basic than that. You know, that it's that big a deal. But he also, by the way, believes that we can maybe, you know, talk about data centers and the cost of the data centers and everything else. He was probably the first person long before Elon Musk to talk about putting data centers and all of this infrastructure in space. I mean, one of his whole goals with what he's doing here is about putting all of that up there so we can live here. Protect and preserve this.
I remember talking to him about this maybe 10 or 15 years ago and I thought, 'Oh my god, that's... I couldn't even fathom what he was talking about. It just didn't make any sense.' But here we are. By the way, we're going to show you some images of this place because the scale of it, guys, is just extraordinary. If you could see it, 3 million square feet here. And the size of these spaceships that they're building is just beyond.
That's what I was going to ask. Is that like a rocket booster right behind you?
That is a rocket booster. And we're going to show you. That's where we're going to speak with Jeff. They're setting up the set right there. But it is just unbelievable. It is unbelievable to behold. I've now been here twice and even just to see the growth of it from where it was two years ago is... it's just unbelievable. I can't. There's no other way.
That's what I mean. There's not enough time in the day for all the things that we want to hear from him. Do you guys remember using pagers? I mean, I used to get a pager. I mean, that was amazing. Look at this thing. Someone can reach me. Call this. So, that wasn't that long ago for me. So, look at... And then remember, I always used to talk about the singularity when these machines know a billion times all human knowledge combined. Maybe we can have a software hardware body that lets us live forever. These data centers... it's happening. I mean I'm, you know, probably too late for some of us to live forever. That's why I'm back to going to church on Sunday just to cover my bases. But it's just amazing how these advances... what we just talked about as if it's normal, isn't it? Building a data center in space.
Kurzweil may have been right about all of it. We'll see.
You might do it. You might make it. And you want to live forever.
I do. I do. Just so I can...
I don't know. We'll see. Torture you.
Well, we all have our reasons.
New developments displayed across the front page of every newspaper this morning in President Trump's settlement agreement with the IRS. Eamon Javers joins us now with more. Hey, Eamon.
Yeah. Hey to you, Joe. In an unprecedented arrangement, the Trump administration has barred itself from pursuing any and all claims against President Trump and his family that could have been made by the IRS, including his tax returns as part of a controversial $1.8 billion settlement between President Trump personally and the government that he leads. Now, the protection extends to Trump, his family members, the Trump Organization, and parties, including trusts, parent, sister, or related companies, affiliates, and subsidiaries. It covers any pending tax audits of Trump and others the IRS may have been conducting. And the sweeping exemption of Trump and his family from normal obligations under tax law raises the question of whether Trump has directed his government to award him a settlement on favorable terms that no other American could get. It comes as part of the settlement of a $10 billion federal lawsuit against the IRS filed in Miami by Trump, Donald Trump Jr., Eric Trump, and their company over the leak of Trump-related tax filings by an IRS employee. Now, as part of that settlement, the Justice Department agreed to finance what is being called an anti-weaponization fund with $1.8 billion in taxpayer money. The fund would compensate alleged victims of law enforcement actions under the Biden administration. Now, a Department of Justice spokeswoman defended the deal, saying there would be little point in settling several significant claims if either party could simply turn around and seek to initiate more adverse claims that could have been pursued previously. Back over to you guys.
So, Eamon, the tax code prohibits the president and also the heads of all the executive agencies from either directing audits or ending audits. And these are all audits I think... right... these some of these audits go back I think as of 2022 there were still audits open from 2015 to 2019 and it's unclear whether any of those have been settled. The only exception to that prohibiting that is for the attorney general. Pam Bondi left the president... in for acting AG has his personal lawyer Blanch in there. So, I am not defending it. I understand why Trump doesn't like the IRS. I certainly do. And even before he ran for president, he used to complain all the time about being audited. And I think it got worse with the lawfare that he would say he was subjected to in the prior administration. So, he was ready. I think he does things sometimes because he can honestly because he can and torpedoes be damned.
My question to you is I mean Democrats are up in arms. They're going to try and get the courts to stop this. The journal says it's unclear who has... who would have standing. What do they mean by that? Why would... or it might have to be Congress that would try to prevent this from being maintained the way it is.
Sure. I mean standing is a legal term meaning you know who has the right to sue, right? So the question is who's harmed by this and then could therefore bring a case in court. And so I'd leave that to the lawyers to argue whether any average taxpayer could say you know I'm harmed by it because I have to follow the law and the president doesn't. But you know, we'll see how that's all adjudicated in the courts. But I think you're right. President is doing this because he can.
Yeah, Congress could step in, but journal points out you'd need Republican votes, but not after the midterms, theoretically. So this could all be challenged in a couple of months if...
Yeah, I think a Democratic Congress would certainly challenge this, right? And obviously if there's a Democratic president in 2029, you know, they could reverse this. But for the meantime, it does give the president some exemption from any kind of investigation or prosecution by the IRS. And it's just a sweeping pre...
You do wonder if... going backwards, right? And you know, you do wonder, you know, what the reaction would be if any other president had done this. I mean, I think this is the kind of thing where you see Trump... other presidents really didn't contemplate. I would like... and here we're going to get to whataboutism. I would like that Hunter Biden deal. Past crimes, future crimes, former crimes, anything here, there, Biden in the pardon.
Yeah, totally. Blanket. So I mean I'm not, as I say, not defending it. It's not my place to defend this. And I understand the ire and I'm sure Andrew wants to get in here.
Well, Eamon, my question actually relates to where you were going, which is if you get a Democratic president or Democratic control of the House and the Senate or something in '28 or maybe it happens in '32 or who knows when. You know, what kind of look back is even possible? And assuming... and maybe I'm wrong about this, but assuming that the president could ultimately before he leaves office pardon himself and you know everybody around him on the way out. Does all this matter anyway? And is that going to become the new norm for presidents in this country?
Well, I think the most important question is the question of the norms, right? I mean, what kind of presidency do we want in this country? Do we want a president who's unaccountable to the law, who the assumption is will pardon himself and everybody around him so that nobody has to follow the law during the administration? That's a question for future Americans as to what kind of country you want to live in. But right now I mean I think tax law is very complicated. I would hesitate to offer any kind of opinion there. But you know, I think Congress could wipe this away in the future and allow the IRS to go back and continue to look at some of those audits of the president. If there are, you know, just take a hypothetical, if the president did commit a tax crime in the past, this would then prevent the IRS now from investigating that. But if Congress undo that in the future, I would think that they could go back and redo it. Now, tax lawyers might jump all over me and say, 'Well, no, because if it's wiped out once, you can't go back. There are no do-overs.' I don't know. But I think this at least for now gives the president enormous relief from any kind of pending audit or tax penalty that he might have been facing and it's a benefit to the president given by the president. Right. And so the question for Americans is is that what you want?
And is that true though of the pardon piece too? Meaning if he were to pardon himself at the end of his term, would that apply that you think the IRS could still go back? I would think that they couldn't go back if...
Yeah. If he pardons himself, right? I was just talking about the actual document that we have in front of us today. If he pardons himself, then they can't go back. That's lasting.
And then the secondary issue I wanted to ask you real quick about was the other piece of this is obviously this 1.6 or 1.8 billion that's going to go out potentially to people who feel that there's been government warfare against them of some sort, lawfare against them. Is that something that you think will get undone in some other way later too?
Well, it expires at the end of the president's term, right? So, this is a temporary thing that's going to create this fund of money that is going to be... the mechanics of it. How it's going to get dispersed, who it's going to get dispersed to, how those decisions are going to be made is all pretty opaque right now. The vice president talked about this in the briefing room yesterday and said these decisions will be made simply on a case-by-case basis. But he declined to rule out the idea that you could have the taxpayers sending money to people who assaulted police officers on January 6th. He said all that's going to have to be decided on a case-by-case basis. Not clear at all how that's going to be handled, who's going to handle it, and whether or not that information will ever become public. We don't know that the Department of Justice will ever disclose who got this money. So you have what's, you know, moving fast and low here. A lot of money moving fast and low and it's not clear where it's going. That's in my experience in Washington that's always a danger for, you know, some kind of political abuse.
And Eamon, you go back to the original sin and that is the leaking of Trump's tax returns by someone at the IRS which allowed the $10 billion... but I don't know whether the $10 billion lawsuit had a really good chance of succeeding. There are some that argue that it wasn't going to succeed. So the president maybe was able to... the president was able to say... since it's the government could have maybe some influence on whether it was settled and then you come and that's where the 1.8 billion comes from so it all...
Yeah, I mean if the president's directing the settlement of his own case against himself, you know, seems like the outcome is pretty sure.
Right, and that's where the 1.8 comes from. All right. And as I say, some things are done because he can and he's got a lot that he thinks that he needs to account for that he thinks happened to him. So I'm not defending it, but I can understand it. Anyway, thanks Eamon.
Coming up on Squawk Pod, the Jeff Bezos of it all. Rockets, the media, politics, and equality. The fourth richest man in the world is next.
So you have a bunch of people in this country who are doing really well, but you also have a bunch of people in this country who are struggling. Politicians are using this age-old technique of, you know, picking a villain and pointing fingers. But the problem is that doesn't solve anything.
Welcome back to Squawk Pod from CNBC. We are bringing you now in full Andrew Ross Sorkin's discussion with Jeff Bezos from Launch Control at Blue Origin's Rocket Park in Florida. Now, this is a working industrial floor with hundreds of workers actively putting together rockets. So, be warned, you may hear some of that activity coming up. Andrew takes things from here.
We are here on the factory floor this morning of Blue Origin and we are here with Jeff Bezos, the founder of Blue Origin, also of course founder of Amazon. It is great to see you. This is remarkable. By the way, just the scale of it. We've been talking about it all morning. But of all the people that we could talk to about everything that's going on in the country right now in the economy, AI, jobs, space, we want to talk to you. And there is so much to talk about. We're going to touch on that. Policy, politics, and so much more. But one of the topics that I thought we should talk about and maybe even start with, is these days it feels almost impossible to pick up a newspaper without reading a headline about wealth in America, about the billionaire class, about wealth inequality and policy and everything else. And it's taken a uniquely critical turn, I think. And I'm so curious before we even get into everything else, what you think about that right now.
Well, first of all, Andrew, I'm glad you're asking the question. I think it's a really important topic. And I think it's an important one to discuss because I see the same thing you do. You know, you see it in a bunch of headlines, you see it in a bunch of places. And I've been thinking... I have been thinking about like what is driving this? It does seem different from 10 years ago. And I think what's going on is that it's kind of a tale of two economies. So you have a bunch of people in this country who are doing really well, but you also have a bunch of people in this country who are struggling, struggling with pay rent, groceries. And so what's happening here is politicians are using the kind of age-old technique. So there's this tale of two economies and they're using this age-old technique of, you know, picking a villain and pointing fingers. But the problem is that doesn't solve anything. And so like if you want to help the group of people who are struggling you have to figure out real root causes and solutions and that takes skill. You know, it's like the way we... if we have a problem at Amazon, you know, the way we would fix it is we would go in and we do the five W's and we try to get to a root cause. We try to find a root fix and then when we fix it at the root, you're fixing it forever. It's a real solution. And what we don't do because it doesn't work is just point fingers and blame people. Might feel good for 10 seconds, but doesn't accomplish anything. And so what could you really do?
So like, do you have a plan?
Well, I have some ideas. I have some places to start. So, you know, I started thinking about this and doing some research. A nurse in Queens who makes $75,000 a year pays more than $12,000 a year in taxes. Does that really make sense? So, people talk about, you know, making the tax system more progressive. How about we start by having the nurse in Queens not pay taxes? Why is a nurse in Queens who makes $75,000 a year paying more than $1,000 a month in taxes? That's $1,000 a month that could help with rent or groceries or anything. And so, and by the way, do you know what that all adds up to? The bottom half of income earners in this country pay only 3% of the taxes. It's only 3%. We can find 3%. So, we don't have... it's a small amount of money for the government. You know, that... and really it's... and the more I thought about it, to me, it's kind of absurd that we're doing this. You know, we shouldn't be asking this nurse in Queens to send money to Washington. They should be sending her an apology. It really makes no sense.
Okay. But then on the other end, the question is, should you be paying higher taxes to pay for the 3% component part of this that you think is going to need to be paid for, if not more than that, given the debts we have?
It's certainly a perfectly valid policy debate, right, to say, do we want an even more progressive tax system? So, you know, the kind of the line that gets quoted all the time is, you know, the wealthy should pay their fair share, right? And we can argue about what the fair share is. That's a policy debate. That's okay. But the vilification is the thing that's just the distraction. And by the way, if you really are being honest about it, we don't have a revenue problem in this country. We already have the most progressive tax system in the world for... the top 1% of taxpayers pay 40% of all the tax revenue. The bottom half pay only 3%. We have already... and I think it should be zero. I don't think it should be 3%. I think it should be zero. So we'd be making more progressive that way. We actually have a spending problem and that's a skills issue. I mean let me give you an example. The New York City school system, right? They spend $44,000 per student. 44,000. That's 30% more per student than other big cities like Chicago, LA, and Boston. And it's three times more than Miami and Houston. And by the way, New York City doesn't get better outcomes. But so what this... listen, let me just say if we ran Amazon the way New York City runs their school system, right? Your packages would take six weeks to arrive, we'd have to charge you a $100 delivery fee and then when the package did finally arrive, it'd have the wrong item in it anyway, right? We can't... That's a skills issue, Andrew. It's not about... It's just competence.
But there's also a question about, you know, there's teachers unions in New York, for example. This money is getting to the teachers. I promise you if you're charging $44,000 per student, how much of that money you think is trickling down to teachers? Not much. And so you don't think it's about creating a livable wage for the teacher? I mean, that's part of the issue is sort of how do you create this livable wage affordability?
More of that. More of that. That amount of spending should come down and more of it should go to the teachers. It's just if you look at the level of administration in the New York public school system, it's off the charts. It's like they have all these middle managers and senior leaders. The money does not get to the teachers.
Let me ask you a question though about great wealth though. And the other issue around on the tax front is whether people of great means at the very, very top end. And Elizabeth Warren has made this point repeatedly. I think she's made it in reference to you and others are able to pay a lower tax rate even though you're paying an enormous sum in taxes, a lower tax rate than maybe I am.
These people sometimes say that, you know, I don't pay taxes. So true. I pay billions of dollars in taxes and it's a... again, if people want me to pay more billions, right? Then let's have that debate. But don't pretend, you know, that this... that that's going to solve the problem. You could double the taxes I pay and it's not going to help that teacher in Queens. I promise you this is... So you can't connect those two things. Not logically. You know, there are more examples. Why is rent expensive? Why is rent so expensive? I recently saw somebody blamed it on Airbnb. Okay, Airbnb is not the cost of expensive rent. In fact, it's been almost... No, let me finish here one sec. It's already been outlawed, right, in New York City and rents are still very high. So, we know Airbnb isn't causing high rents. What's really causing high rent is government intervention. We subsidize demand with things like tax policy, which is fine, but at the same time, we constrain supply. We constrain supply with things like zoning and permitting. Why does it take so long to get something permitted to build? If you want rents to come down, Econ 101 really simple. You can't subsidize demand and constrain supply. If you do, prices are going to skyrocket. But this is not anybody's fault other than government policy. And this is fixable. Again, this is a skills issue.
Well, let me ask you about government policy, though, because the other piece of the argument is that the wealthy have extraordinary influence over government policy and have too much influence over government policy, by the way, over tax policy, over housing, over all of it.
But what I would say is that we have way too much corporate welfare, way too much corporate subsidies. We have... there's way too much influence in politics from business, in some cases wealthy people who really focus on that, unions. There's a bunch of people interfering in the political process. And if we can make that better, we should do that too. That would be another root cause. We go back and figure out what is happening there. But yeah, it doesn't make any sense for the government to subsidize, you know, certain agricultural crops, certain real estate transactions, Hollywood films. The tax code is 10,000 plus pages long because it has built-in corporate loopholes for various things. This is crony capitalism and of course it should be fixed.
Well, that's my question then. And therefore the question is should people like you in your position advocate ways to fix it? I mean one of the things people talk about is this policy of what they call buy, borrow, die. This idea that you can take your assets that you have, stock, and get loans.
As far as I know there's no truth to this buy, borrow, die thing. I don't even know where this comes from. And you know, you can look at... I'm selling Amazon stock routinely and that's how I fund Blue Origin and Prometheus and a bunch of other things, investments in small companies that I'm doing.
So I... every time I saw... it may not be you... I pay taxes on that... but there are other people by the way, Elon Musk who takes extraordinary loans against his stock and as a result isn't paying taxes in that moment. Now, when he sells stock, he pays.
And this is, you know, again, can we fix that? If that's a true loophole, I'm a little skeptical that that's a true loophole, but if it is, can we fix it? Then we should. That's... I don't think such a loophole should exist. But I want to get back to my primary point. When you fix that loophole, it's not going to help that... it's not going to solve the full problem. That nurse in Queens, it's not going to help her at all.
Let me ask you this. Let me... I'm going to ask... and so that's what you got to bring it back to. You know, if you really want to have a progressive tax system, you also want that money to actually be helping and not just dissolving in, you know, administrative bureaucracy and not even getting to the teachers.
But part of it is with bad outcomes. 70% of the New York City school kids in 8th grade aren't at their reading level. 70% only. It's like it's actually 72%. 28% are there.
Let me ask you about the anger because there seems to be anger at least from certain political sides of this. And AOC recently said in a podcast, I'm just curious how you think about this. Says there's a certain level of wealth and accumulation that is unearned. She says you can't earn a billion dollars. Just can't earn that. She says you can get market power. You can break rules. You can abuse labor laws. You can pay people less than what they're worth, but you can't earn that. You, by the way, you've earned extraordinary amount of money. You employ largest... largest employer, if not one of them, in the whole country. When you read that, what do you think?
Well, it's not correct on its face. Let me give you a simple example. Let's say you start a burger joint and you have 10 employees and you make a little bit of money, right? Until you have... this is one outlet. And by the way, these are the most delicious burgers in the world. People love your burgers, Andrew. And so then you open a second outlet, right? And now you're making a little bit more money and you have 20 employees and you open a third outlet. By the time you've opened a thousand outlets, you are a billionaire, right? And by the way, this is a real life story. It happens all the time. It's In-N-Out Burger. It's, you know, Raising Cane's chicken. At what point did that money all of a sudden become unethical? It didn't. There was one outlet and then there were two and then there were three. What you're doing... the way you make a billion dollars or hundred million or $10 million or anything is you create a service that people love and if millions of people choose your service you're going to end up with a billion dollars, right? And you can, you know, just try it with a chicken franchise.
Do you think though... but your chicken has to be good? But there's the question of whether the people who are working at the burger joint ultimately should be paid more that that's what creates the affordability gap.
Well, by the way, that's also... if you want to change the minimum wage, change the minimum wage. Amazon, we have our entry-level wage in Queens is $23 an hour. And that works up to be like $52,000 a year. And this is an entry-level job. Doesn't require any educational attainment. It doesn't require any pre-existing skills. We will train you. It's actually a great first job. On day one, you get full health care. The same health care program that our senior executives get, the same one I'm on. And so, this is actually a fantastic entry-level job. $23 an hour. But guess what? They're still charging that person more than $10,000 in taxes. Now, that's absurd. But why would you charge somebody making $52,000 a year, $10,000 a year in taxes? It doesn't make any sense. Let them be. You know what? That person has a chance to uplift themselves and to uplift their family and to learn more skills. This is... but like why are you taxing them so much? I really am puzzled by this, you know, the more I think about it.
Why? Well, we need that revenue. The piece is that we have a big budget gap. And so whether you're the federal government or whether you're a city, I mean, I was going to ask you about what you thought of the pied-à-terre tax attacks in New York and what you thought of what's happened with this Ken Griffin video that the mayor made. You have a place in the city.
Yeah, there's two different... I think there are two different things about that video. On the one hand it's perfectly fine to have a policy debate about whether you want to have a pied-à-terre tax, right? The second piece which is not so good is to go stand in front of Ken Griffin's house and act like he's some kind of villain. Ken Griffin isn't a villain. He hasn't hurt anybody. He's not hurting New York. In fact quite the opposite. And so that piece of it isn't right and there was no reason to do that. A pied-à-terre tax is a... you know, there's very... taxes on out-of-towners are very popular taxes. That's why there are hotel taxes and you know hotels always have very high tax rates because why not tax the tourists and there are limits. If you raise the hotel taxes too much, tourists stop coming. Right. So, you have to be judicious. But I think that the pied-à-terre tax is a fine thing for New York to do. And you know, they have to figure out, but it's a policy debate, right? Policy debates don't have to be finger-pointing. This is the piece that... and so you're not going to sell your place? Unfortunately, it's a... it is an effective political technique. It's as old as the hills. So when you don't know how to solve a problem, create a villain, blame them, but it won't solve the problem. The only thing will solve the problem is skill, right? And so really, it's a skills issue. You want to say... but any corporate CFO worth their salt, the Amazon CFO could find 3% in the federal budget on a Tuesday afternoon. This is... there is so much waste in government spending.
What do you think personally? I mean, you read these headlines. You see your name in them whether it's the Met Gala protests. On a personal level, what do you personally think of all this? I know we're talking about policy.
Well, on a personal level, you know, I think of my parents and I think of how they uplifted me. I think of where they started. I think, you know, my dad is a Cuban immigrant. He came to this country right after Castro took over and he was a 16-year-old boy who didn't speak a word of English. He came all by himself. His parents weren't allowed to leave. He was in a refugee camp in the Everglades and he built himself up. My mom had me in... she was in high school. She was a 17-year-old mom. You know, it wasn't cool to be a pregnant mother in high school in Albuquerque, New Mexico in 1964. And she brought herself up. And so I look at that and I think, you know, I want to make sure that the people who are struggling today have a chance to do that, too. To bring themselves up and maybe, you know, maybe they're going to be the next Steve Jobs. Maybe they're going to be... maybe one of their kids will be the next Steve Jobs. I don't know. But we can give them a better chance by eliminating their tax bill. I don't want to reduce it. I want to eliminate it. I think there's something very powerful about zero, you know, like we... zero is a better number than like $1, you know, we don't charge... we have free shipping at Amazon, not like 25 cent shipping. Zero is a good number. When people are starting out and they're struggling, stop taxing them. We don't need it. We live in the wealthiest country in the world. America is the greatest country in the world. We have more entrepreneurial dynamism here than anywhere else in the world. This is the best time to be alive in America because we have access to capital is so easy right now. It's so good. And I'm talking about entrepreneurs and aspiring entrepreneurs. And that's... we should have so much optimism about the future.
