54. The Pandemic Profiteers: The Businesses That Made a Packet out of COVID
The Owen Jones Podcast
Owen Jones
4.4 • 1.4K Ratings
🗓️ 23 March 2021
⏱️ 22 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
The pandemic has caused misery, turmoil and death for so many - but as this documentary exposes, for much of the rich elite, this is boomtime. From Amazon to private contractors, profit margins have exploded. In the first 9 months of the crisis, billionaires' fortunes jumped by nearly $4 trillion. While the high street is in a tailspin of decline, Amazon saw their profits triple in one quarter; and £37 billion of public money has been wasted on Test and Trace, which was found to have a minimal impact on the pandemic, but which shovelled vast amounts into the bank accounts of private consultants.
This is the story of how COVID-19 became a money spinner: as told by the people who know.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | I'm just a number. Nothing more than nothing less. Just a number. |
| 0:05.2 | The impact of the coronavirus pandemic on the country's finances was laid bare today. |
| 0:10.4 | The economic pain of COVID-19 will be deep and protracted and nowhere will be spared. |
| 0:15.9 | I just want to jump in with some Amazon numbers here, guys. A couple of key headline numbers. |
| 0:20.8 | Revenue 89 billion, just under that 88.9. This was high expectations. They've been it. |
| 0:30.8 | COVID-19 and the British government's failure to take decisive action to suppress it, |
| 0:37.2 | unleashed the biggest economic slump in 300 years. Although the economy has placed the |
| 0:42.0 | life support, hundreds of thousands of people, large to young workers, lost their jobs. |
| 0:47.3 | Public sector workers, including nurses, who'd been clapped for their efforts by Tory ministers, |
| 0:53.2 | face a renewed real-terms pay-cut. But it is boom time for some. Some are always going to do |
| 0:59.0 | well in the age of COVID, who will begrudge Joe Wicks getting the nation into shape, |
| 1:03.6 | but the pandemic has proved a money spinner for much of the super rich. |
| 1:07.7 | Globally, billionaires wealth jumped by nearly $4 trillion in the first nine months of the crisis. |
| 1:14.8 | While the high street suffers, by last October, Amazon were tripling their profits and their UK |
| 1:20.8 | sales jumped by over half in 2020. But that profit depends on the hard graft of their workforce. |
| 1:28.8 | Launched in 2015, Amazon Flex is touted by the company as a means to earn extra money and move |
| 1:35.9 | closer to your goals. They're ultra flexible, quote-unquote, workers who deliver Amazon packages. |
| 1:42.8 | This is the gig economy in action. We meet with one of their drivers. Now we have to keep him |
| 1:48.4 | anonymous. He's in constant fear of losing his job. And we quickly have to get in the van with him |
| 1:54.3 | because he's so scared of running late. The anxiety and stress of this worker is palpable. |
| 2:01.8 | I cannot remember when I take the break, the last break. I cannot remember. |
| 2:05.4 | You just don't take breaks during a working day. I don't think absolutely. |
... |
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