July 20, 2021

Jeff Bezos Thanks Amazon Workers and Customers for Making Him So Rich He Can Go to Space

And they say collective action isn’t possible.

bezos

Chuck Bigger/Space Symposium via ZUMA Press Wire

Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.

On Tuesday, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos became the second billionaire in as many weeks to sort-of go to space. The world’s richest man spent several minutes in zero gravity on Tuesday aboard a rocket developed by his company Blue Origin. Going to space, or almost-space, is not, in itself, anything new—Alan Shepard became the first American to leave the atmosphere 60 years ago; four different current or former United States senators have been up there since. Perhaps the most striking thing about Bezos’ efforts is how low the bar has been set that a joyride that lasted shorter than a bathroom break at Amazon can be seen as an international news event.

It’s easy to be cynical about all of this, but in fairness, no one could put it more cynically than Jeff Bezos.

After he landed safely, the newly minted spaceman sat for an interview, and sounding somewhat punch-drunk off the thrill of the experience, summed up the whole fair in a very concise way.

“I also want to thank every Amazon employee and every Amazon customer because you guys paid for all of this,” he said.

Yes, that’s…that’s just about it. Tuesday’s launch was depressing less because of the spectacle in West Texas than because it’s tough to find the error in Bezos’ statement. It was a tremendous collective effort principally for the benefit of one person—an “interestingly shaped” manifestation of the broken political economy that made Bezos possible. This is the end product of all that sweat and sacrifice—of delivery workers peeing in bottles, of warehouse workers staring at propaganda about their boss while they take a shit, of people doing manual labor for $15 an hour, of humans getting injured at his factories and then being forced into a Kafkaesque company healthcare system, of Amazon employees working to hide their co-workers’ injuries, of economic concentration and runaway inequality, of a tax system that is designed to allow someone to become the world’s richest person while sometimes paying no income tax at all.

“Awesome!” Bezos shouted, trying to catch a skittle in his mouth 52 miles above the ground. “It’s so good.”

This is where all the money went.

WHO DOESN’T LOVE A POSITIVE STORY—OR TWO?

“Great journalism really does make a difference in this world: it can even save kids.”

That’s what a civil rights lawyer wrote to Julia Lurie, the day after her major investigation into a psychiatric hospital chain that uses foster children as “cash cows” published, letting her know he was using her findings that same day in a hearing to keep a child out of one of the facilities we investigated.

That’s awesome. As is the fact that Julia, who spent a full year reporting this challenging story, promptly heard from a Senate committee that will use her work in their own investigation of Universal Health Services. There’s no doubt her revelations will continue to have a big impact in the months and years to come.

Like another story about Mother Jones’ real-world impact.

This one, a multiyear investigation, published in 2021, exposed conditions in sugar work camps in the Dominican Republic owned by Central Romana—the conglomerate behind brands like C&H and Domino, whose product ends up in our Hershey bars and other sweets. A year ago, the Biden administration banned sugar imports from Central Romana. And just recently, we learned of a previously undisclosed investigation from the Department of Homeland Security, looking into working conditions at Central Romana. How big of a deal is this?

“This could be the first time a corporation would be held criminally liable for forced labor in their own supply chains,” according to a retired special agent we talked to.

Wow.

And it is only because Mother Jones is funded primarily by donations from readers that we can mount ambitious, yearlong—or more—investigations like these two stories that are making waves.

About that: It’s unfathomably hard in the news business right now, and we came up about $28,000 short during our recent fall fundraising campaign. We simply have to make that up soon to avoid falling further behind than can be made up for, or needing to somehow trim $1 million from our budget, like happened last year.

If you can, please support the reporting you get from Mother Jones—that exists to make a difference, not a profit—with a donation of any amount today. We need more donations than normal to come in from this specific blurb to help close our funding gap before it gets any bigger.

payment methods

WHO DOESN’T LOVE A POSITIVE STORY—OR TWO?

“Great journalism really does make a difference in this world: it can even save kids.”

That’s what a civil rights lawyer wrote to Julia Lurie, the day after her major investigation into a psychiatric hospital chain that uses foster children as “cash cows” published, letting her know he was using her findings that same day in a hearing to keep a child out of one of the facilities we investigated.

That’s awesome. As is the fact that Julia, who spent a full year reporting this challenging story, promptly heard from a Senate committee that will use her work in their own investigation of Universal Health Services. There’s no doubt her revelations will continue to have a big impact in the months and years to come.

Like another story about Mother Jones’ real-world impact.

This one, a multiyear investigation, published in 2021, exposed conditions in sugar work camps in the Dominican Republic owned by Central Romana—the conglomerate behind brands like C&H and Domino, whose product ends up in our Hershey bars and other sweets. A year ago, the Biden administration banned sugar imports from Central Romana. And just recently, we learned of a previously undisclosed investigation from the Department of Homeland Security, looking into working conditions at Central Romana. How big of a deal is this?

“This could be the first time a corporation would be held criminally liable for forced labor in their own supply chains,” according to a retired special agent we talked to.

Wow.

And it is only because Mother Jones is funded primarily by donations from readers that we can mount ambitious, yearlong—or more—investigations like these two stories that are making waves.

About that: It’s unfathomably hard in the news business right now, and we came up about $28,000 short during our recent fall fundraising campaign. We simply have to make that up soon to avoid falling further behind than can be made up for, or needing to somehow trim $1 million from our budget, like happened last year.

If you can, please support the reporting you get from Mother Jones—that exists to make a difference, not a profit—with a donation of any amount today. We need more donations than normal to come in from this specific blurb to help close our funding gap before it gets any bigger.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate