Amazon and Walmart Hoard Pandemic Profits, Why House Democrats Underperformed in the Election, and More

December 24, 2020

Editor’s note: The Brookings Brief will be on a short hiatus for the holidays. We will be back on our regular schedule on Monday, December 28, 2020.

Today, the gap between the extraordinary wealth of Jeff Bezos and the Walton family and the struggles and sacrifices of frontline workers is wider than ever. New research from Molly Kinder and Laura Stateler details the record profits made by Amazon and Walmart during the pandemic, the failures of each company to fairly compensate frontline workers, and how actions from their competitors compare.

In addition to their structural disadvantage in Congress, House Democrats’ underwhelming performance in the 2020 elections reflects unrealistic expectations of improving on their 2018 results, and the large number of voters who marked their ballots for Joe Biden but not for Democratic House candidates, explains William Galston.

YouTube’s algorithms work very well at detecting shared themes and forming communities around them, but it is clear that these algorithms also propagate extremist content and disinformation. Jonas Kaiser and Adrian Rauchfleisch argue that YouTube should deactivate recommendations for political content.

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