Couple things that aren’t accounted for:

A) this is a pledge by companies they may or may not even have the cash required to back it up. Certainly they aren’t spending it all at once, but to be completely honest it’s nothing more than a PR stunt right now that seems to be an exercise in courting favor

B) that so called private capital is going to get incentives from subsidies, like tax breaks, grants etc. It’s inevitable if this proceeds to an actual investment stage. What’s that about it being pure private capital again?

C) do to the aforementioned circumstances in A it seems whatever government support systems are stood up to support this - and if this isn’t ending in hot air, there will be - it still means it’s not pure private capital and worse yet, they’ll likely end up bilking tax payers and the initiative falls apart with companies spending far less then the pledge but keeping all the upside.

I’ll bet a years salary it plays out like this.

If this ends up being 100% private capital with no government subsidies of any kind, I’ll be shocked and elated. Look at anything like this in the last 40 years and you’ll find scant few examples that actually hold up under scrutiny that they didn’t play out this way.

Which brings me to my second part. So we are going to - in some form - end up handing out subsidies to these companies, either at the local state or federal level, but by the logic of not paying off student debt, why are we going to do this? It’s only propping up an unhealthy economic policy no?

Why is it so bad for us to cancel student debt but it’s fine to have the same cost equivalent as subsidies for businesses? Is it under the “creates jobs” smoke screen? Despite the fact the overwhelming majority of money made will not go to the workers but back to the wealthy and ultra wealthy.

There's no sense of equity here. If the government is truly unequivocally hands off - no subsidies, no incentives etc - than fine, the profits go where they go, and thats the end of it.

However, it won't be, and that opens up a perfectly legitimate ask about how this money is going to get used and who it benefits

I think the idea of a "college-educated class" speaks to another fundamental problem with the American project - that a college education is now seen as some upper-class bauble. It is only seen as such a luxury because it is such a slog and expense. Y'all should fix that problem too!

Student loans are the only loan type which you cannot bankrupt out of. I'm sure that many students would accept bankruptcy rather than bailouts if that is preferable. It doesn't make sense to saddle 20 year olds with insurmountable debt.

This sort of folksy take always ignores that the same issue happens with the trades as does with the professional classes. No one class is immune to a crash due to unnatural promotion. You've let your moral view overcome that reality

It's a fair comparison. Stargate is fundamentally about two things - America's industry needs a cash injection, and we're choosing a completely hype-dominated vein to push the needle into.

Problem is, the parent comment is right. Even if you think student loan mitigation has washy economics behind it, the outcome is predictable and even desirable if you're playing the long-game in politics. If not that, spend $500,000,000,000 towards onshoring Apple and Microsoft's manufacturing jobs. Spend it re-invigorating America's mothballed motor industry and let Elon spec it out like a kid in a candy shop. Relative to AI, even student loan forgiveness and dumping money into trades looks attractive (not that Trump would consider either).

Nobody on HN should be confused by this. We know Sam Altman is a scammer (Worldcoin, anyone?) and we know OpenAI is a terrible business. This money is being deliberately wasted to keep OpenAI's lights on and preserve the Weekend At Bernie's-esque corpse that is America's "lead" in software technology. That's it. It's blatantly simple.