In January, Jeff Bezos announced that he would donate $33 million to help 1000 people go to college. This week, shortly after Amazon posted a $2 billion quarterly profit to end 2017, his company announced hundreds of layoffs at its headquarters. Meanwhile the 20 finalist cities for Amazon HQ2 are working feverishly to put together the most lavish package of taxpayer-funded subsidies. It’s great that Mr. Bezos wants to help 1,000 Dreamers – immigrants who were brought to the United States illegally as children – to attend college. But just imagine how many people he could help if Amazon paid taxes, wasn’t focused obsessively on replacing workers with automation, didn’t employ hundreds of thousands of temps who are paid low wages and receive no benefits, and declined to engage in reality TV-style contests to find out which state and local governments will succumb to desperation and give his very, very profitable company billions of dollars that might otherwise be spent on things like… education, for one.