Last week Jeffrey Preston Bezos did a sad little interview (videos, transcript) with CNBC. In it, the well-steroided and plastic-faced oligarch tries to make his case that billionaires are just deeply misunderstood. It's clear Jeff is worried about popular, progressive post-Trump reforms eating into his fat stacks of cash.

-snip-

Bezos tries to sell Andrew Ross Sorkin on the idea that he's been pushing hard to eliminate income tax for common people (he has not), pays his fair tax of tax obligations (he does not) and isn't the type of man to make his employees skip bathroom breaks and pee in bottles so they can meet brutal quotas (he is).

As the recent New Yorker profile on Sam Altman makes clear, you don't get this rich without a certain sociopathy that heavily features telling people whatever they want to hear. Elon Musk and Altman have recently been telling people that the billionaires support universal basic income. They don't. Not really.

-snip-

What Bezos and friends don't want is this golden age of corruption and bigotry to usher forth a violent pendulum swing toward good faith popular progressive reform. They don't want a whole bunch of AOCs and Zohran Mandamis running around getting young people excited about equitable taxation and functional regulators.

-snip-