Jeff Bezos says low earners shouldn't be taxed

Plus: What could possibly go wrong with OpenAI’s float?

Author

Matt Davis
May 21, 2026

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Companies mentioned in today’s newsletter

Jeff Bezos says low earners shouldn't be taxed

(Google)

In a stunning display of solidarity with the working class, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos has descended from his billionaire’s yacht to declare that the bottom half of earners in the U.S. should pay zero federal income taxes.

Speaking on CNBC's "Squawk Box," our benevolent tech overlord argued that struggling families shouldn't have to cough up their hard-earned money to the government. Of course, while he was eager to "advocate" for this noble cause, he conveniently forgot to specify exactly how lawmakers might actually achieve this massive reduction in the tax burden. Details, details!

One might wonder if this sudden populist gambit is a desperate attempt to rejuvenate his image. After all, the billionaire is still nursing a PR hangover from a disastrous New York Times profile of his wife, Lauren Sánchez Bezos. The piece painted a picture of a modern-day Marie Antoinette, explicitly noting that "Mrs. Sánchez Bezos seems to have influenced the uber-rich to stop apologizing, and start enjoying themselves.”

And oh, how they’ve been enjoying themselves! Bezos has been living it up on his megayacht and recently threw a lavish, three-day bacchanal of a wedding in Venice, complete with a pre-wedding foam party and private water taxis for his 200 A-list guests. To make matters worse, while the couple was dripping in vintage Dior and diamonds at Paris Couture Week, Amazon $AMZN ( ▲ 2.19% ) announced it was laying off a staggering 16,000 employees.

But please, don't accuse Jeff of hoarding all his gold. The Bezos family recently made headlines for donating $100 million to a charity funding preschool education in New York City. It certainly sounds like a king's ransom, until you realize that Forbes currently estimates Bezos' net worth at a mind-boggling $269 billion. For those doing the math at home, that generous $100 million gift represents a whopping 0.037% of his total wealth. For an American with a median net worth, it’s like donating $70, or (checks notes) about half the cost of your annual Amazon Prime membership.

Truly, a hero for our times.

Quote of the Day

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This serves as a warning about the risks of A.I.-assisted research and verification, that is why I wrote the book.

Anthropic hires OpenAI co-founder

It seems the AI industry only has about five key employees who just rotate between companies. The latest to spin the revolving door is Andrej Karpathy, an AI researcher who co-founded OpenAI, got poached by Tesla $TSLA ( ▲ 3.25% ) , went back to OpenAI $OPENAI ( ▲ 12.46% ) , took a brief detour to start an education startup, and has now decided to bless Anthropic $ANTHROPIC ( ▲ 8.13% ) with his presence.

He’ll be joining Anthropic’s pretraining team to help their Claude models acquire their "core knowledge and capabilities." Taking to X, Karpathy shared his groundbreaking revelation: “I think the next few years at the frontier of LLMs will be especially formative," he said.

Elon Musk, who poached Karpathy to work on Tesla's still-non-existent fully autonomous cars, previously described him in an email as “arguably the #2 guy in the world in computer vision.” In that same email exhibit from his recent lawsuit, Musk gloated, “The OpenAI guys are gonna want to kill me, but it had to be done.…"

Now it's Anthropic's turn to borrow him! How long before he’s playing for Real Madrid?

What could possibly go wrong with OpenAI’s float?

The plucky little former nonprofit that could is going to bless the summer markets with an Initial Public Offering. What better time to file a confidential prospectus than right after missing multiple internal revenue and user targets, thanks to stiff competition from rivals like Google $GOOGL ( ▲ 0.32% )  and Anthropic $ANTHROPIC ( ▲ 8.13% )?

CEO Sam Altman is apparently eager to ring the bell by September. Sure, the company's own CFO, Sarah Friar, has cautioned company leaders that they "may need more time," but who has time for financial prudence when you have a mind-boggling $852 billion private valuation to justify?

To get this monumental task done, OpenAI has enlisted the humble services of bankers at Goldman Sachs $GS ( ▲ 5.75% ) and Morgan Stanley $MS ( ▲ 4.32% ) . The path to an IPO was conveniently cleared after OpenAI successfully swatted away a landmark lawsuit from jilted co-founder Elon Musk, who alleged in court that Altman and crew had "stolen a charity" when they pivoted to their highly lucrative for-profit model.

To sum up: Despite bleeding cash to fund giant data-center commitments, losing ground to faster-growing competitors, and seemingly ignoring internal warnings to pump the brakes, OpenAI is charging full speed ahead to Wall Street. What could possibly go wrong?

Song of the Day: MGK, Wiz Khalifa, ‘Girl Next Door’

Here’s a nostalgic song featuring hazy dream-pop textures, pulsing synths, and upbeat drums. Reviewers describe the production as "airy" and "smooth," so it’s just like this newsletter.

‘Truth in the AI age’ book includes made-up quotes

(Google)

You really can't make this stuff up — but apparently, AI can. Steven Rosenbaum, author of the nonfiction masterpiece “The Future of Truth,” has bravely revealed that his book about the impact of AI on truth contains fake quotes generated by AI.

Despite claiming to take "full responsibility" for relying on ChatGPT and Claude, Rosenbaum humbly spun his mishap into a selling point, stating that if his colossal error "serves as a warning about the risks of A.I.-assisted research and verification, that is why I wrote the book.”

He added that the made-up text doesn't "diminish the larger questions that the book raises about truth.”

🤦🏻

The people he falsely quoted are surprisingly less than thrilled by this avant-garde journalism. Tech journalist Kara Swisher firmly stated she "never said that," adding, "I also sound like I have a stick up my butt, according to ChatGPT."

Psychology professor Lisa Feldman Barrett confirmed the quotes attributed to her “don’t appear in the book and they are also wrong." Meanwhile, NYU professor Meredith Broussard perfectly diagnosed her own section as "either an A.I. hallucination or a misattributed quote.”

The future of truth is fiction, it turns out.

IRS grants Trump immunity from tax audits

In a convenient deal with the Department of Justice, Donald Trump has graciously agreed to drop his $10 billion lawsuit against the IRS. His reward? U.S. tax authorities are now "forever barred" from pursuing claims related to existing tax audits against Trump, Donald Trump Jr., Eric Trump, and the Trump Organization.

Acting Attorney-General Todd Blanche enthusiastically signed the one-page document granting this sweeping immunity, completely absolving the family from such claims forever.

Danny Werfel, a former IRS commissioner, told the Financial Times he is unaware of a single precedent where the IRS permanently agreed to ignore previously filed tax returns, quaintly adding that "people expect the same tax rules... to apply to everybody."

Although not, of course, if Jeff Bezos gets his way.

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Should you check your 401(k) today?

👎️ 

No.

Poll of the day: If you havin’ Jeff problems…

What do you think of Jeff Bezos saying low-income workers should avoid income tax?

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Poll of the day: Give him a lot of rope…

We asked: "If your boss is a raging alcoholic who disappears on benders, how would you handle it?”

You answered:

🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ If your boss can't bother to show up to make you feel valued, you should "insist on fairer compensation for the extra work you’ve all taken on" so he can at least make you feel important "with his wallet." (40)
🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ Don't call it a drunken disappearance; instead, frame the fallout from his benders as a purely "procedural matter." Just complain about "business-continuity issues" and use the opportunity to grant yourself "decision-making authority" while he is out. (28)
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩 Instead of doing his job for him, you and your co-workers could just "stop covering for him for a week." Then, sit back and watch him scramble to "pick up the slack" when he finally resurfaces. (153)
🟨🟨🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️ Because you and your colleagues are effectively "the key people" keeping the company alive during his absences, use that leverage to form a coalition and demand that he "formally cede some power and ownership." It's basically a hostile takeover. (89)
🟨🟨🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️ Don't bother tackling his alcoholism on a personal level yourself. Instead, form an employee group and try "approaching someone he trusts outside of the business" so his personal friends have to deal with his drinking problem instead of you. (87)


397 Votes via @beehiiv polls

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