Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) has a plan for taking Jeff Bezos' money.
The 2020 candidateunveiled her proposalFriday to pay for her estimated $34 trillion Medicare-for-all plan without upping taxes on the middle class. It relies on a big chunk of change from the country's biggest earners, and would end up costing the Amazon founder nearly $7 billion.
To raise the tremendous sum needed to provide universal health care, Warren laid out a$20.5 trillion tax packagethat she says targets "the financial sector, large corporations, and the top 1 percent." Bezos falls at the very top of that last category, and he'd be subject to Warren's wealth tax that was upped in this plan from two percent to six percent. And six percent of Bezos'$111.7 billion net worth? That's about $6.7 billion.
Joining Bezos at the top of the pile is Bill Gates, who would put in around $6.4 billion, and Warren Buffett, who'd contribute closer to $5 billion. Bezos' company would also end up paying heftier taxes, though it won't have to worry about providing employees with health care anymore.Kathryn Krawczyk
On Friday, after a week ofrumors, Googleannouncedit will be acquiring Fitbit, the wearable fitness trackers, for $2.1 billion. This latest move comes after Google's $40 millionpurchase of Fossil's smartwatchtechnology in January, reportsCNBC, and shows the tech giant's "aggressive attempt" to up their game in the wearables race,TheNew York Timesobserves.
Facebook has also been expanding its hardware portfolio with "Oculus virtual headsets, Portal smart speakers and planned AR glasses," and their interest in health tracking goes back to 2014, when the social network acquired a fitness app calledMoves,The Vergenotes. So it may not be surprising that Facebook purportedly held talks to buy the smartwatch pioneer — but ultimately, Facebook lost the deal to Google, who offered twice as much, reportsThe Information.
Google's presence in the wearables market is limited to Wear OS, which failed to sway Apple Watch users,CNET notes. And while Fitbit was the closest competitor to Apple Watch — which owns abouthalf of the global wearables market— Fitbit has been struggling this year, reporting sinking sales in its July earnings, theTimesreports.
"With Google's resources and global platform, Fitbit will be able to accelerate innovation in the wearables category, scale faster, and make health even more accessible to everyone," Fitbit co-founder and CEO James Parktold CNN Business. As a reality check for thecelebratingtech companies,Wiredpredictsthat the acquisition "will attract the attention of antitrust regulators" before the deal is finalized in 2020.