No more interstellar champagne parties

Yesterday, Amazon founder and multibillionaire Jeff Bezos spent four minutes in space, at a cost of about $5.5 billion.

Let's be clear exactly how outrageous that is: an Amazon worker making $15 an hour would have to work more than 91 million hours to spend one minute in space. (In fact, an Amazon worker making $5,000 an hour would still need to work 275,000 hours – more than 100 years of 40 hour weeks – for one minute of space tourism.)

It's also worth noting that while working families pay the taxes that funded decades of space research and exploration, Amazon has famously avoided paying its fair share, through a combination of accounting trickery and good-old-boy lobbying.

This isn't sustainable – morally, socially, or materially. And our progressive movement is on the front lines, fighting to pass Senator Warren's wealth tax on ultra-fortunes of $50 million or more, to end the climate crisis on this planet rather than exporting it to another, and to make sure everyone on this planet is fed before we fund any more interstellar champagne parties.

Are you with us? Chip in now to elect a Congress that will always fight for the folks on the ground.

"Billionaires racing one another into space for their own glorification while millions – including their workers – struggle to put food on the table" might make good science fiction but it makes a terrible reality.

Let's write ourselves a better one.

Jim