alt Hacker News> So let’s treat them like the state owned corporations
If they were state owned, we could vote for how the profits get used and we would have larger budgets for healthcare and education.
Replies
BiteCode_dev • yesterday at 11:43 AM
But if they were, they would never have become what they are in the first place, including the good things.
States are neither good at innovation nor dynamism.
But they are very good at telling you what you should and should not do.
The latter part has some wonderful consequences for consumer or worker protections, but it has some terrible ones for creating new stuff or improving the old.
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The US federal government alone (not including state and other local governments) spends north of $1 trillion dollars per year on healthcare.
https://fiscaldata.treasury.gov/americas-finance-guide/feder...
Another $1.3 trillion on wealth transfers from workers to non workers (including disability). And another $608B on wealth transfers from people with higher income to people with lower or no incomes.
Alphabet and Apple, combined, earned $193B in 2024, from the entire world.
https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/GOOG/alphabet/net-...
https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/AAPL/apple/net-inc...
How does your suggestion make any difference, other than destroying 2 of the very few organizations driving demand for US assets, and hence help support the US dollar's purchasing power?