> Today, Apple supports more than 2.7 million jobs across the country through direct employment, spending with US suppliers and manufacturers, and developer jobs in the thriving iOS app economy. Apple is the largest taxpayer in the US and has paid almost $45 billion in domestic corporate income taxes over the past five years alone.
If I add up the entries of the "federal" line, I get $69 billion for the 5 columns 2020, 2019, 2018, 2017, 2016. Am I doing something wrong here? This is only the federal tax, not even the state tax, which would probably count into "domestic corporate income taxes" too.
The sum of the deferred lines is, for federal corporate income tax, $51.4 billion. The difference is $9 billion...
IDK I dont know much about US tax law, financial reports, or the like. So maybe I did something wrongly. It'd be interesting how they obtained that figure in the press release.
If crazy tax schemes are legal, that's the politicians' fault for not fixing them, not Apple's (who has a duty to shareholders to, you know, not pay more taxes than they have to).
Getting rich via investment depends on having income above a threshold which is set by the cost of living.
If you spend 50% of your income every year and stick the rest into the stock market and get 6% or so after inflation, you can sustain your spending without working after about twelve years.
If you spend 90% of your income every year and stick the rest into the stock market and get 6% or so after inflation, you can sustain your spending without working after about forty years.
It's all to say that being a shareholder matters in a hugely different way depending on your income. The disparity is worse when you look at how you can sustain higher volatility once you're already wealthy.
You're asking why can't people just be shareholders, but I think you're asking why it isn't enough that everyone can be shareholders. The reason is that being a shareholder only matters for those already making a ton.
You construct the same kind of false dichotomy that is so incredibly common among the but duh rich and duh poor blahblah do.
There are more categories than the ultra rich and the incredibly poor. Stop that.
A lot of people can save 10-20% in stocks (such as via index funds.) A lot of people would rather not do this and still complain and point sticks at "the rich."
What can you do?
"The reason is that being a shareholder only matters for those already making a ton."
Is simply wrong and nonsensical. I don't make a ton, I am not ultra rich, it matters a lot to me to be a shareholder. It matters because that way I get to make money when "they" do.
"Getting rich via investment depends on having income above a threshold which is set by the cost of living."
It's just not necessary to talk about getting rich. Getting rich is not relevant in this context. You made claims that are blatantly false that are part of the ever tiresome either rich or poor-dichotomy.
Most people can save money and invest that money in a way that makes them shareholders.
>Let's make shareholders rich. It'll all trickle down from there...
This sounds like a strawman because GP wasn't making any claims about whether it's bad or not. Moreover, it's perfectly reasonable to expect that each individual tax payer to pay as little tax as possible. eg. are you going to claim all tax eligible tax credits/deductions on this year's returns?
Companies (and people), one way or another, will always have to be expected to be greedy. This is why i'm pro-capitalism and pro-government. We can't hope for corporations to _not_ be greedy just because it's "possible". We have to expect/assume they are, and act accordingly.
Just like we can't give government entities absolute power. Checks and balances are needed in all of this. Reality is messy.
Rich rich, look I am a small shareholder like millions of other and I just like put 5% of my salary into my company because I like what I see in the inside, every month.
It kept dropping since I started and maybe one day it'll rise but I just enjoy taking some sort of ownership of my own work.
You always want to tax shareholders when a company gets popular in the media but it's hard to reimburse shareholders when the company goes down...
You can’t expect a company (or individual) to not act in their best interests - it’s up to the Goverment to make the law and tax code fair or redistribute wealth
> They are lobbying to increase taxes and giving away their wealth. What more do you want from them?
I think you're misreading my comment. It wasn't meant to shame buffet/gates for not paying more taxes, it was to point out that even they are going to act in their self interest in terms of paying taxes. ie. they won't pay more taxes than they need do.
They are donating their wealth so its not like they are going to hoard the money because the tax is low. So I dont really understand why you think they should pay more than the official tax for now
Corporate charitable giving is also a means to stay in the public's good graces. It is a long-term play for profit. (I'm not arguing that it is a bad thing).
Is it? I'd expect most of it is driven by actually valuing the charity. If we frame even the charitable stuff as profit-driven, it just reinforces the idea of some duty towards profit.
I get where you are coming from but what needs to change is the tax code, no public company, hell no normal individual, is going to pay more taxes than legally required.
Yes, and for businesses it's additionally a typical arms race/coordination problem. If every company except yours is using a certain legal tactic to pay lower taxes, you're at a competitive disadvantage if you don't use the same tactic. Only law and law enforcement can prevent the inevitable outcome of everyone using it.
The problem is they use the money they have to lobby and influence in favor of those beneficial tax loopholes and policies. It's a self-reinforcing cycle that we need to break.
Right, and also - did they really "commit", at least in the "pledge" or "binding promise" sense of the word? I think "commit" might be too strong of a word. Maybe "plans to" would be better.
They can announce this now and change their mind as they please, right? I'm not sure about Apple's track record on things like this, they may be good, but they could just slowly pull or decrease funding, and we probably won't even hear about it in the future, or am I missing something?
This is almost right, but TSMC is a fab operator yet they seem to have transitioned to 5nm just fine.
However you are correct in that TSMC still owns and operates its older node fabs. Today's cutting edge fab is tomorrow's legacy fab producing no-longer cutting edge commodity parts. This is why Apple won't buy any fabs or fab operators themselves.
Still they could sell foundry services for any spare capacity, or sell them to another company when it's no longer using them for cutting edge. I'm sure there's a very good reason they're not going that route but I can't help but think the whole world would be better off if the players that can afford it would operate their own fabs.
I guess as long as Apple thinks they can remain the highest bidder at TSMC and China doesn't invade there is no reason to think their supply is threatened.
But who would the be selling that legacy fab capacity to? It would most likely be their competitors, at least in part. I just dont see Apples management being all that enthusiastic about any of that as a business. They put a huge premium in being as focused as possible.
Intel is already pivoting and opening up their fabs to other businesses. It's been a long time coming but Intel Foundry Services seems like a good move.
Good question. It sounds like employee compensation is included in the figure so it really could just be "all projected US expenditures in the next 5 years".
Correct me if I'm wrong, but I take it the funding going into all of these office spaces means remote working at Apple is more or less impossible in the future for the vast majority of employees?
Let’s run through the possible reasons Apple announced this, with various degrees of cynicism.
1. Getting some good press before Congress decides to do something in regards to the app store model.
2. Apple is reading the winds, seeing that Chinese supply chains may be politically constrained, and preparing for that future.
3. Apple is reading the winds, seeing that Chinese supply chains may be politically constrained, and announcing this investment so they can continue to have Chinese supply chains after a good PR move.
I suspect they really were going to spend a significant chunk of this regardless, but they packaged it into a nice press release at a potentially fraught political moment.
And…$430 billion over 5 years is a lot, but what if it influences tax or tariff rates just a bit in your direction over a 10-year period? Because that could be worth it, especially, again, if you were going to set up that new campus anyway.
Yep, all tech companies have seen the writing on the wall for overconcentrating their operations in California. People in general have become more and more hesitant to move there for a wide platitude of reasons from absurd cost of living to issues such as mass wildfires.
They've realized that perhaps, just perhaps, they could afford to have more than one large corporate campus at their scale of fuck you money. Which gives them wider access to talent and actually reduces headaches such spiraling cost of living forcing salaries to also spiral upwards and also being expected to solve housing crises locally.
Apple already has a large campus in Austin that dwarfs a lot of companies and a second under construction. They might not be quite Spaceship in terms of unique design but they exist.
Being solely located in one of the most expensive areas in the United States does seem a bit absurd if you can avoid it. Based on Cook's statements about returning to the office, it seems like they value being physically proximate more than the immense savings that moving the workers who could be remote to remote.
Comments like these greatly downplay the role of industry clusters. The hot take of the day is that California is a hellhole to be escaped as soon as possible.
Industry Clusters are often historical, so it always strikes me as strange when I see comments like this one that make a case for how misguided it was for tech companies to cluster in Silicon Valley and tolerate the high cost of living.
That line of thinking misplaces causes and effects so that they’re hilariously backwards.
Silicon Valley is a innovative place because of an extensive history of educational institutions, research facilities, and other market conditions that simply did not physically manifest in any other place.
On top of all that, the software industry has one of the lowest COGS (cost of goods sold) of any major industry. Facebook’s sales per employee is close to $2 million [1]. The fact that their SV employees cost hundreds of thousands of dollars more than employees is quite nearly irrelevant. Someone that’s 10 or 20 percent more productive will make up that labor cost difference by bringing in 10 or 20% more revenue, so it doesn’t really make sense for Facebook to abandon the best talent pools in search of cheaper rent or wages.
Tech giants are building out in Austin for its specific traits, and they don’t seem to mind that it’s rapidly becoming expensive and congested just like California. The question that might be asked is: why is Apple in Austin instead of Houston or Dallas or Nashville or Omaha?
The big difference is Texas isn't ran by morons who make it impossible to build homes.
The anti building laws of California are by far the biggest reasons housing is so expensive. Even if Austin gets pricey, you can always drive into the city.
As someone who left California, I will say no one in their right mind should live there. No matter how much you earn, you'll never realistically out earn the cost of living. I found myself quickly deep in credit card debt trying to be cool in California. It's just a horrible place to live, I had to estrange myself from my family to move, and it was absolutely worth it. Anyone who tries to make you live in such a horrible place does not care about you at all.
People are also phenomenally nicer in other cities, I was shocked at how easy it was to meet my girlfriend once I got to Chicago. It's as if Chicago's this amazing City where people understand you need to work to get things you want instead of thinking you're entitled to everything.
Anyway, with remote work now being seen as viable I can see the idea of having expensive big offices becoming antiquated.
I live near the area where they announced the North Carolina 'investment'. A land holding company associated with Apple bought some land in the RTP area years ago around the time they announced the new Austin headquarters. NC had just passed a controversial law (HB2) which scared away a lot of business from the state (it has since been mostly reversed). There's speculation the announcement for the NC campus could've probably happened years ago if it weren't for that law.
Most of the so-called "investment" is real estate based. They will most probably develop some very expensive offices, fancy stores, put some additional people to work there, and call it a day.
If I was Apple getting out of the Chinese supply chain would be a priority - if only to have some leverage with a second option.
It seems like a pretty high risk situation for them and has chilling effects elsewhere (content restrictions on Apple TV). It also damages their brand ethos around privacy. CCP pressure on Taiwan and TSMC is also a concern I'd be thinking about if I was them.
I wish Apple or govt would fund similar fab/s in the US - hell just build it with stimi or huge tax breaks and TSMC can still hold the IP and profit, just have enough onshore knowledge to run it in isolation if needed.
CCP hitting TSMC in their first strike would be a hell of a whammy, even if mutually destructive.
Apple and much US associated supply chains have already been moving away from China. Media is regularly coming up where the side effects are reported, for example the Foxconn contractor in India. The US lacks the infrastructure to leverage talent or capacity domestically. The only thing that will fix this is government policy--otherwise Silicon Valley would have decent transit, no homelessness and California would have its own State or region-level healthcare delivery network. The same things Taiwan has with only 23 million people that benefits TSMC (and the people there).
>The US lacks the infrastructure to leverage talent or capacity domestically
I dont think infrastructure is the root of our (US) problem. We do have a skills, and talent gap. not just in "tech jobs" like many people think but at factory floor level as well.
Even if they could open the factories tomorrow finding people to fill those jobs will be hard.
Personally I see infrastructure as the thing that gets qualified people to productivity and keeps them productive (jobs or whatever form that takes), and I also expand the notion of infrastructure to include a society and community with effective education and healthcare to maximize the human capital of the group. Given this I see infrastructure and the various components of it as decades behind in the US and Apple would be smart to take the direction. Just consider the process of applying for an SBIR or finding a job or starting a startup or getting from SF to San Jose, etc.
This would require the expansion of the term infrastructure to encompass just about everything in society thus making the term meaningless.
This is the current Democrat definition of the word where everything from health care to education is "infrastructure", that is not what the average person would consider to be "infrastructure".
Healthcare and Schools are not "infrastructure", "infrastructure" would be Roads, Power, Communications, Basic Utilities, etc etc etc.
>> Just consider the process of applying for an SBIR or finding a job or starting a startup or getting from SF to San Jose, etc.
Given that California is the least business friendly state in the union, in fact it is down right hostile to business I would image doing anything in CA is pretty hard
Yes, well we as a developer community can never let up on Apple and Google's app store models being legally reprehensible.
We are quite literally the most negatively affected community by these monopolies over general consumer's devices.
We need to be the "force to be reckoned with" here and constantly petitioning politicians for action else get campaigned AGAINST electronically (our domain).
I would say that the app store model negatively affects a growing "small software business" sector of the economy which will only continue to grow as a stable pillar of the modern middle class.
In other words, this is only becoming that much more of a critically important issue.
>Apple’s $430 billion in contributions to the US economy include direct spend with American suppliers, data center investments, capital expenditures in the US, and other domestic spend — including dozens of Apple TV+ productions across 20 states, creating thousands of jobs and supporting the creative industry.
I dont like how Apple spin this as investment in the headline, when it is clearly contribution. If you buy something at Walmart, or any of your daily needs, is that an investment in US?
And I dont know how that $430B is calculated.
Direct Spend with American Suppliers are mostly Corning for Front Glasses, Qualcomm for Modem and Patents. These two alone is close to $50B in five years.
Even if Apple spend $10B on Datacenter and $10B on Apple TV ( They dont ), Likely including all their employees salary, Rent for Apple Retail, basically every single dollar spend within US. The numbers still doesn't add up.
It reads to me Apple is doing their PR pieces on their contribution to US because Congress is now looking at them as enemies.
That's a standard use of the term "investment" in the macroeconomic sense of exchanging money to get people to do work so they can pay other people to do work for them.
Ita because paying US people for that work is better for the personal development of (otherwise underemployed) US people than paying non-US people.
It reads like they're trying to avoid creating jobs in manufacturing directly, but will instead pick US suppliers and potentially let them hire lower skilled workers.
I wouldn't expect this to create that many jobs in manufacturing, it seems more like engineering and creative work, with a promise to prefer US suppliers, assuming they exists.
Yeah that sounds right, although I don't think they ever claimed or even implied that they themselves are creating manufacturing jobs. Even prior PR by them around creating domestic manufacturing jobs was showcasing their suppliers.
Barring a major transformation, I don't see Apple ever operating a factory, whether in the US or overseas.
> If you buy something at Walmart, or any of your daily needs, is that an investment in US?
If a company opens an office overseas and hires people, we call it foreign direct investment. Using the same math for domestic investment seems alright. It's money being pumped into the local economy, after all.
Well, it’s all spending, but is all spending investment?
From an accounting perspective, when a business spends money on a factory it’s an investment since you end up with an asset on the balance sheets. But the same is true of spending on inventory. There are also intangible investments that don’t end up on balance sheets (like writing software) and for high tech companies that can be pretty substantial.
You could simplify this to “Apple says they’re going to spend a lot of money in the US.” Okay, I guess that’s good?
> I dont like how Apple spin this as investment in the headline, when it is clearly contribution. If you buy something at Walmart, or any of your daily needs, is that an investment in US?
You can argue yes, if you pay Walmart $50 for eggs and stuff. That means Walmart pays taxes (goes to the Gov), Walmart pays employees (so they can buy other stuff), Walmart buys a product (paying every individual person from shipping to receiving, etc). Opposite would be saying going to Canada and buying it all, and all you would pay would be an import fee. Or buying something from Aliexpress and getting free shipping, which is probably a net value on the US economy.
But you can also argue no, cause it's so small that it is almost insignificant.
I kind of hate the way Apple phrases their business investments like they're performing some great charitable act. Also, I'll wait for an external audit of whether they're paying all the relevant local taxes before I would consider giving them credit for these "investments" in local infrastructure they're making.
Arrgh ... never give a sucker politician an even break. RTP is a fine place to put this project, good enough in fact that the state doesn't have to bribe them to do it.
This tax-break-if-you-locate-here thing is a longstanding scam against politicians by companies.
These tax incentives should be structured as follows:
1. Do your payroll and pay your payroll taxes (FICA, Federal and State unemployment, whatever).
2. Submit your payroll tax receipts to the state incentive operation.
3. Get a rebate of some percentage of that payroll tax.
In other words, no tax-break payments until people get actually paid.
This incentivizes the company to do what the state wants: employ people in good jobs. If the company gets a "better offer" from some other place and moves, then the state doesn't get completely screwed over.
Seems like you can't win. If you stay in bay area you get accused of concentrating wealth in the bay area and not spreading it. If you move to other areas you get accused of gentrifying the area and pushing poor people out.
> hate the way Apple phrases their business investments like they're performing some great charitable act
Why do you think domestic investment is so economically useless that it must be a charitable act?
Cupertino is announcing spend. Spending here is better for people here, ceteris paribus, than spending there. If they announced $430bn in new Southeast Asian contracts, there would be a twin top comment lamenting Apple's lack of domestic spending.
>The accelerated commitment will fund a new North Carolina campus and *job-creating investments* in innovative fields like silicon engineering and 5G technology
other pull quotes from the article
>Apple is doubling down on our commitment to US innovation and manufacturing with a generational investment reaching *communities across all 50 states*
>Apple is the largest taxpayer in the US and has paid almost $45 billion in domestic corporate income taxes over the past five years alone.
> designed to prepare students for careers in hardware engineering and silicon chip design — to engineering programs at *Historically Black Colleges and Universities* across the country.
>bringing *clean energy and high-paying jobs to local communities across the country*.
If you're a regular at a restaurant, and you point out to you friends that you've supported said restaurant, you are not claiming a charitable act. You are pointing out the consequences of your actions.
If someone wants to see that as charity, it speaks more to them than anything else. (And claiming your patronage was an act of charity would be rightfully seen as a diminishment of said business.)
i have no idea what you're saying but you're bending over backwards to contrive some sort of hypothetical that's completely ignorant of corporate PR in general and apple's PR (with its "we're removing cables for the environment") in particular.
>If someone wants to see that as charity, it speaks more to them than anything else.
what does it say about you that you're so intent on absolving a corporate entity of its own disingenuity? like do you work for apple?
None of that sounds like charity or even framed as charity. They need workers to work at these factories they are building. US workers don’t have those skills. So they need a training center for their business investment to work out.
man you people are coming out of the woodwork to simp for apple; if what you're saying were true then the language wouldn't be so topical and timely (eg alluding to hbcus).
Why do you think this is happening? I've noticed a recent decline, but people have been saying this place isn't what it used to be for years. I've been attributing it to a change in myself.
I wonder if you could do some analytics on comments and measure whether things have actually gotten worse. Finding a metric might be difficult. I suppose you could measure what percent of comments are from newer users over time, which is probably correlated.
> Why do you think this is happening? I've noticed a recent decline, but people have been saying this place isn't what it used to be for years. I've been attributing it to a change in myself.
I would say users likes anon_tor_12345 are more of an exception on the HN but they are they rule on reddit.
> I wonder if you could do some analytics on comments and measure whether things have actually gotten worse.
HN is really good at flagging bad actors. Curious to see what % of posts get flagged and compared to historical trends to see if things are really declining.
Please stop posting unsubstantive and/or flamewar comments to HN. You've been doing both of those things repeatedly lately, and we ban that sort of account.
Not an article, a press release from Apple. Of course their PR team is going to spin it as positive as possible, that's their job. Used to be, reporters would pick this up and do their best to take the spin off, do a few interviews and provide additional context.
This is the exact same approach governments use when trying to go the other way: politically motivated hand-outs framed as "investments". It's a meaningless word in a PR statement.
>The announcement uses the word investment 17 times. Reading that as a charity pitch requires a few logical leaps.
Again, a non-sequitur. Even if they read "investment" as "tea party" 17 times, they still never said or implied that it was useless.
The Apple article is obviously trying to paint the investments as acts of goodwill. Not many people would expect anything else, it's just good PR. "Charity" might be an exaggeration, but can't you see why it could rub people the wrong way?
>Why do you think domestic investment is so economically useless that it must be a charitable act?
that's not what op (the person you're responding to) is saying at all. they're simply saying that apple disguises its infrastructure spending as charity and that that's off-putting. in fact it's not charity and furthers their own goals.
it'd be like me claiming to be a philanthropist because i had to a build a road connecting my factory to my mine that incidentally connects towns along the way. note this is example is right on the nose because this is exactly what corporations do.
> apple disguises its infrastructure spending as charity
Except it doesn't. It uses the word "investment" 17 times in the announcement. If someone reads this as a charity pitch they're doing mental gymnastics.
Apple is not even doing the whole "Made in the USA" schtick, where companies imply they're taking patriotic pain for the good of the country. This is fully pitched as a competitive play. An investment to yield returns.
To continue as a company they have to invest just like any other company. As Apple is so big, of course the investments they make are big. But not necessarily bigger than what any other company invests in percent of revenue or profit.
This announcement makes it sound like it's something amazingly special they do. But in fact, any company throughout history has invested a certain percentage of their revenue, just like Apple is now doing.
It could never be charitable because Apple is a publicly traded company and investors want returns.
People talk about companies the same way a hunter-gatherer applies animism to trees for example. Companies are not people, they can’t be cynic nor greedy they just are what they were created to be. Profit machines.
Apple is extremely good at being. High returns on invested capital, huge moat, etc...
One potential reasons is that a lot of things are more expensive in the states - including hiring.
If they did their massive campus in Eastern Europe they would get a lot of cheap smart talent, cheap building and probably a favourable tax treatment (if they needed even more of that).
Replace with Canary Islands, Cyprus or Malta if you want somewhere with nice weather.
Taxes will be payed purely by virtue of hiring the 20,000 employees they want, which will stimulate the economy. Let's not dumb down the conversation by claiming that companies lowering their tax expenditure is somehow bad.
Why investments should be like charitable act? Investments are suppose to be win-win, because they are investments, not handing out money ...
Also, it is a very low level misconception that paying local taxes is how you contributing to the local community. No. Investing is already contributing to the local community. The business will build campus there, and hire people there, and also increase other local businesses surround the campus. And those people work for them pay income taxes there and also pay consumer taxes there. Every local government understand these, that's why they want to attract investments and give their tax breaks, because investments alone bring benefits to the local community.
It would be extremely stupid for any local government to say: Hey we don't you invest hundred millions in our community, unless you pay full taxes. Lol.
This comment touches a personal nerve with me. I am not against it, but I have seen it so many times traveling in developing countries in South Asia and Southeast Asia. When (South) Korean and Japanese companies invest in a developing economy, it is with head, heart, and wallet. They go 100%. How many times have a seen Korean or Japanese business people on a local flight study local language from a book or try to practice local language with staff? Too many to count! I makes me proud, and I am neither Korea nor Japanese. This is how it should be. And, (for the most part), they are welcomed by communities. To be fair: I feel the same about Volkswagon's recent commitment to Rwanda to build their first plant in Africa. I am suspicious of UK/US/AUS/China firms that show up with the "resource extraction" mindset. Five or ten years later, there are terrible environment consequences or social unrest. Almost never, do I see that with (South) Korean or Japanese firms. (Yes, I have seen it first hand in SA/SEA developing nations.)
Do you not see the similarities between "give rich people low taxes and they will create economies around them," and "give rich corporations low taxes and they will create economies around them?"
Companies will seek the lowest taxes in an area that suits them. If they're building in America, it's because it behooves them to build in America. There are lots of places they can go to lower taxes, but they're not competitive.
So you still have companies who are VOLUNTARILY building industry in places with high taxes, because it behooves them. Can you see how a race to the bottom in this regard is damaging? They're already committed to paying high taxes, its just a matter of how high. So—do you really want to be the place that cheats yourself out of the most income, for a company that really doesn't care if they settle in your county, the next one over, or the one across the country?
The minute you become noncompetitive, the company will move, and your countrymen are the people who paid for it. The real winner? the company, who got to hang onto more of their vast profits. :-) Apple committed almost $100B a year. And places are fighting over... how much tax revenue? there's plenty of room for fair taxation.
You've done nothing to convince me that allowing big companies to exploit the local economy and infrastructure for free actually ends up in a net benefit for anyone other than the company.
You don't get rich by giving things away (unless if you've figured out how to make this possible—in which case, please ready a room for me :-))
Well that's the way everyone is doing. When individuals eating some good food nearby call it "supporting local African-american business". Why wouldn't Apple or any other company make a virtue out of necessity.
> I'll wait for an external audit of whether they're paying all the relevant ..
They will be paying minimum legal taxes possible not maximum possible. If this is something one need to feel outraged they can start early and not wait for reports/audits.
I’m curious if you could quote what exactly in this news is written as if it’s a charitable investment on part of Apple.
If this announcement was in India or China, folks would be grabbing pitchforks that Apple is sending jobs overseas. So they’re bring net new tech jobs here, and your response feels like “damned if you do, damned if you don’t”
I don't know, with so much of American business capital seemingly having gone to Asia in the past several decades, it is rather charitable to be investing in the U.S.
I mean, I wish it were not, I wish it were normal for U.S. business to invest in the U.S., but here we are.
Please indicate the phrases that imply a "great charitable act." I see normal, straight-forward corporate press release speak. If Intel or Google were making a similar announcement it would sound quite like this one. They are making significant investment. Would you "give them credit" if they were not making the investments?
How many people did Apple have to hire to make the new Apple campus? You can directly see the impact that had. Compare that to Amazon or Foxconn. At least they actually seem to hold a large majority of their promise.
Well that's the reality of our economy in 2021. A tech behemoth coming to your town and adding jobs + the human capital + tax base that comes with it can be transformative, and there's few other options for localized economic growth sadly.
I don't care why they are doing this, but it should have happened a long time ago. The cynism here is disappointing.
If companies start investing their money domestically then excess savings will fall, deflationary pressures will be gone and the economy will start growing quickly again and that means wages will grow too.
They are a US company, reaping the tax benefits of that nexus. If they'd been an EU company, they would have paid a lot more in various taxes (including higher wage taxes) over the last 40 years. IOW, they would not be as wealthy a company today.
That is true now but has not been true for all of the last 40 years that Apple has been in business. And you're ignoring wage taxes and employee benefits, which are significantly higher in some other nations.
My money SHOULD be worth more tomorrow than it is today. Tomorrow the economy is just a tad bit more productive, so my dollar should go further... Why is deflation a curse word nowadays? I feel one of governments only role is to ensure that the dollar is not being debased and slowly losing value of time or atleast at a rate that is known. When the FED prints an unlimited supply of money, it breaks down the social contract or useful fiction that we all accept about our money.
i've read some rhetoric somewhere that deflationary money is a terrible thing for the economy since it reflects in asset prices and makes you more concerned with saving. From my perspective, that's a very good economic consequence and would stop all these boom bust cycles that we seems to be creeping up at irregular intervals of massive spending.
A better system of stock trading would be bonding. When i buy a stock, the money is locked into a contract that is reimbursed to me after the purchase period. say i buy $100 worth of Tesla for a 1 year stock period. At the end of that lease, i will recieve my $100 back and Tesla may reward me with a % based on the performance of that year. I have no liquidity but my only 'Loss' is the loss of other rewards i could have gained by betting in another industry or company. Everything being completely liquid allows for HFT and the banking industry to drain our economic fecundity by placing it in the realm of fairy-land instead of investments in infrastructure, energy generation and manufacturing.
> My money SHOULD be worth more tomorrow than it is today.
It is very simple why this is not a good policy.
Let's say you are a software engineer working on some software product/service. You are working hard on that software, adding features, fixing issues, maintaining it, etc. The buyer pays you $100 today for that software.
Tomorrow you release a new version, with lots of upgrades and new capabilities. The buyer for this software says "my money should be worth more tomorrow than it is today" so they offer only $80 for the new version. Boom -- your work is worth less every day!
Very good point and I think your right. Maybe deflationary pressures on the economy would only lead to more centralization of assets than we already have today. One pedantic point to make though; Technically, that $80 is worth more today so it's not like "Your work is worth less every day". it's the same exact thing in your example.
Your point is not pedantic at all and in fact completely negates the other commenters counterpoint made to your initial argument.
The buying power of the entity you are exchanging in has changed -- for everyone. This absolutely does not diminish your work. It is literally equivalent to being paid in many more bitcoin in 2012 versus today.
I am sure there are valid critiques of allowing deflation. But, as of yet a solid one has not been provided in this thread.
It would be interesting to see if anyone can offer other sources or arguments against this pro-savings, deflation-allowable, economy.
Allowing natural volatility into the value of any asset that is traded, including the USD, likely resolves to a more natural equilibrium in the economy, no?
Deflation causes many problems. For starters at a macroeconomic level it reduces money velocity and investment. If people will make a better return just holding onto their money, then they will be more averse to spending it obviously.
Yes, this is because of the interchangeability of the value of an asset declining and the fact that no one is buying it. No different than a stock price in free fall. Why is it in free fall? Because no one wants it.
Artificial infinite inflation takes away from the buying power of especially younger generations (but average people in general). It inflates the supposed price of assets (in terms of the inflated exchange asset, e.g., USD) which makes it much more difficult for newcomers to gain access to the necessary amount of buying power otherwise.
Think of it like inflating bitcoin. True, bitcoin is worth more. But, it takes a lot more work and time to get more bitcoin. This actually causes deflation to people's labor value and thus their buying power and leverage.
And not all assets will inflate equally. And some assets will receive government subsidies (this is an increasing phenomenon due to the inflating economy) because they are considered "critical" to society e.g., gasoline, milk, and green energy.
Overall, allowing things to deflate and inflate more naturally actually increases volatility which is actually what will increase economic velocity. Trading will increase, and interest will increase because of profitable trading, and thus investment will increase.
So, no, the current artificial and centralized system that thinks it can outgame game-theory is just stupid.
It's just Neo-Liberal/Neo-Conservative hippie baby boomer nonsense to concentrate wealth and power into an aristocratic elite empowered by trillions of dollars of managed retirement portfolios. They simply do not want to allow for natural volatility so that their managed assets are always increasing. It's absolute insanity.
EDIT:
Not that my above comment was perfect, but let me attempt to be more succint.
> Monetary appreciation only helps
Appreciation of an asset only helps the holders of said asset. But "appreciation" is always an exchange rate. Appreciated relative to what?
> A deflationary environment explicitly benefits creditors.
And this is where my contention lies. This dogmatic condemnation of deflation ever being allowed to happen. Temporary deflation or even deflation for some extended period of time is not a bad thing.
Economic velocity runs on volatility and not what one currency or asset is doing relative to another. Inflating and deflating exchange rates only increase volatility. But, truly, only if both types of relationships are allowed and are not artificially snuffed out by government and/or central bank intervention.
And you assume that creditors are the only ones holding an asset? Credit is only one kind of exchange. Spending is another. Stock trading is another. They all depend on volatility.
Thus, I am not arguing for inflation or deflation. I am arguing for the greatest amount of allowance for natural volatility.
> in your proposed monetary environment.
I see that you assumed that I was arguing for constant monetary appreciation. I was arguing that there is nothing wrong with monetary appreciation.
It seem that you and others are deadset on arguing that all deflation is immoral.
My above comment mentions the common root of such views.
> Much like it's difficult for newcomers to buy large amounts of bitcoin.
Yes, I should clarify my bitcoin comments. Bitcoin is deflationary relative to USD (where most "newcomers" are coming from).
BUT, to add substance to my point it should also be noted that there are coins that outperform Bitcoin and are thus deflationary in their relationship to Bitcoin. A newcomer holding these would actually have more purchasing power.
I clarify this to stress that at the end of the day: consumer spending, loans, credit, etc. are all trading. And trading is what makes the economy go around. Volatility is good.
I'm not really sure what you're arguing, I didn't say "infinite inflation" is good lol. Monetary appreciation only helps the buying power of people who already have money. A deflationary environment explicitly benefits creditors. It would be very difficult for a newcomer to get buying power, leveraged or otherwise, in your proposed monetary environment. Much like it's difficult for newcomers to buy large amounts of bitcoin.
Not that my above comment was perfect, but let me attempt to be more succint.
> Monetary appreciation only helps
Appreciation of an asset only helps the holders of said asset. But "appreciation" is always an exchange rate. Appreciated relative to what?
> A deflationary environment explicitly benefits creditors.
And this is where my contention lies. This dogmatic condemnation of deflation ever being allowed to happen. Temporary deflation or even deflation for some extended period of time is not a bad thing.
Economic velocity runs on volatility and not what one currency or asset is doing relative to another. Inflating and deflating exchange rates only increase volatility. But, truly, only if both types of relationships are allowed and are not artificially snuffed out by government and/or central bank intervention.
And you assume that creditors are the only ones holding an asset? Credit is only one kind of exchange. Spending is another. Stock trading is another. They all depend on volatility.
Thus, I am not arguing for inflation or deflation. I am arguing for the greatest amount of allowance for natural volatility.
> in your proposed monetary environment.
I see that you assumed that I was arguing for constant monetary appreciation. I was arguing that there is nothing wrong with monetary appreciation.
It seem that you and others are deadset on arguing that all deflation is immoral.
My above comment mentions the common root of such views.
> Much like it's difficult for newcomers to buy large amounts of bitcoin.
Yes, I should clarify my bitcoin comments. Bitcoin is deflationary relative to USD (where most "newcomers" are coming from).
BUT, to add substance to my point it should also be noted that there are coins that outperform Bitcoin and are thus deflationary in their relationship to Bitcoin. A newcomer holding these would actually have more purchasing power.
I clarify this to stress that at the end of the day: consumer spending, loans, credit, etc. are all trading. And trading is what makes the economy go around. Volatility is good.
Appreciation due to contracting supply. In a fractional reserve system, if monetary velocity is low enough the total supply naturally shrinks. This is the "pro-savings, deflation-allowable" economy I am responding to. Money can appreciate in the sense that there is literally less of it to be spent on things, in aggregate. It's a pretty basic econ 101 supply and demand problem.
Aggregate demand and supply is very much affected by currency and commodity appreciation, contrary to what you're saying. Additionally there is volatility, and there is price discovery. Today, right now. Things are already how you want them to be. The dollar depreciates and appreciates against commodities and other currencies all the time.
> The dollar depreciates and appreciates against commodities and other currencies all the time.
Bingo! But, I do not see anyone complaining about this "only benefiting the creditors".
> econ 101
To be fair, I find a reference to very weakly approximating models of reality, taught to ignorant and naïve students for the sake of starting them off somewhere, to be slightly disingenuous.
> Appreciation due to contracting supply.
Contracting supply is not the only reason for appreciation. If we take that fact into consideration then your causality arrow of 'low monetary velocity' -> 'supply shrinks' -> 'appreciation' is one of many possible paths. Therefore, deflation is not what causes appreciation, it is in of itself a description of that very appreciation. Again, appreciation RELATIVE to something. You seem to be ignoring this very important fact.
You also created circular thinking. In a prior comment you said the deflation causes monetary velocity to fall, and then you say monetary velocity causes appreciation. Appreciation is where the deflation comes from. So, which is it? Deflation pops into existence and causes monetary velocity to fall? Or a magical appreciation occurs from a slowing monetary velocity and causes deflation to occur?
> In a fractional reserve system
Yes, in a central banking system the 'monetary velocity' is artificially controlled. Almost completely. You can push money into parts of the economy to inflate things at a whims notice. Then everyone loves that the "values" of investment vehicles are bigger than they were yesterday.
So, you are effectively only arguing for the status quo. But the status quo is not working. Is this really your best argument?
> volatility, and there is price discovery
Ah, word games. Even if someone might provide definitional differences, there is no objective real-world difference between the two things.
---
Here is what I argue for:
Not allowing natural (not managed) volatility (or 'monetary velocity') -- MOVEMENT -- is a fool's game. You cannot beat basic game theory that is dependent on the biology of humans. You just can't. There is no fancy economic jargon that can allow you to. There is no monetary policy that will enable you to. You can pitch and sell artificial manipulation of the economy (via economic theories or political ideologies) but you are only pitching bubbles.
Allowing natural periods of deflation in the economy allows for volatility, trade, flux, interest, investment, wins, ... and here is the most important word: losses.
Loss. It allows for someone to actually lose.
These hippie boomers have never had to lose anything in their lives. The artificial manipulation of the markets and the economy reflects this mindset and attitude.
There is more than one currency and that fact alone negates any possible argument against allowing deflation to occur naturally in the economy. If it occurs because of temporary "contracting supply" (of one currency) then so be it.
Money isn't a natural phenomenon. You say it's unnatural for a central bank or government to intervene, but it's their currency. Its existence is inherently political, and serves an interest or policy goal. Be it capital accumulation to boomers or whatever else. They can also pick losers, if they really wanted. Look at Lehman Brothers.
The dollar, and its associated monetary policy, isn't something that has been perverted by evil external forces. I'm arguing the 'status quo' because thats how it was intentionally designed and thats how it intentionally works. Not wasting my time describing some fanciful alternative perfect system
Asset trading is about as natural to human civilization as you can get. Having a socially accepted intermediary asset is not much beyond that. Simply saying its not a "natural phenomenon" is not a mathematical or scientific self-validating statement. It's just a statement.
> it's their currency.
Yes, and literally anyone can create a currency out of thin air. Other people will use it if they decide to assign it value.
> Its existence is inherently political
No, It's existence is civilizational. It technologically fulfills the ability to have high transaction rates of an increasing population that other assets can not satisfy. the ability to transact more easily and more quickly is what determines the bounds of the potential of an economy. So, of course, all major civilizations have utilized this technological tool for political means. As a way to increase and concentrate power through economics.
This is fundamentally different from intermediary assets being constructed initially as a political tool. Money is technology. It is not politics. Like literally any other technology it can be used politically.
> isn't something that has been perverted by evil external forces
I am not sure what insanity you are trying to project onto me, but I never even came close to implying anything along these lines. You should attempt to avoid fallacious arguments a little harder.
> some fanciful alternative perfect system
You mean like your supposedly perfectly controlled and singular monetary systems with artificial inflation hoses? Have you seen the economy?
If this is your dream economic system then why not live in China with even more inflation and more centralization? Or maybe you already do. Genuine question, nonetheless.
This assumes the new version of the software has no added value from adding new features and fixing bugs, etc.
Even with your assumption suppose you accept their offer. The $80 received should in turn be able to purchase something that was worth $100 dollars yesterday. The nominal value may have gone down but the quantity of goods and services you can buy with it is the same.
If you need a concrete example of why deflation is crushingly terrible for an economy look no further than Japan after the asset bubble burst in the 90s.
Deflationary thinking meant everyone expects prices to be lower tomorrow, so no one spent money on needed items and simply waited to make purchases to save money. This slowed down the economy into a death spiral that they still are climbing out of. Mortgages became crushing. You can't get a raise. Interest and deflation work together to make debt nearly inescapable.
The point of money is to be spent, i.e. facilitate the simple transfer of value. An excellent example of the direct damaging effects of deflation is bitcoin. No one spends it. It has utterly failed at its goal to become a primary mechanism to transfer value. Everyone expects its value to keep increasing so it is almost never transferred (to the point that hodling and never spending became a meme). Slowing down the exchange of money is what kills an economy.
But inflation is also no good if salaries don't rise with it.
The way inflation is calculated is quite flawed from my understanding (they don't include rent/mortgage payments or college tuition - prices of which have exploded in the past two decades).
But if salaries actually rose with inflation then there would be no inflation.
You are fundamentally misunderstanding the purpose of the modern central banking nonsense that the parrots you are replying to merely repeat without any understanding whatsoever of how absolutely devastating it is to the economic stability of the middle class.
deflation is bad for the economy because it discourages spending.
Just for illustration, imagine if you know that you can buy 2 rolls of toilet papers 2 months later for the price of 1 toilet paper today, and you don't have an immediate need for toilet paper, then most likely you'd wait.
Spendings is what drives the economy and it's the circulation and liquidity that help the economy becomes more productive.
> you can buy 2 rolls of toilet papers 2 months later for the price of 1 toilet paper today,
This is called a sale and happens all the time in consumer spending. It is a well known phenomenon that many people (not all) will wait to purchase when they have more purchasing power. But it is also well known that a subset of the population will not wait.
I am not sure how you perceive your arguments as being a rigorous support of your position or a rigorous critique against the opposing position. It is truly mysterious.
Having money worth more tomorrow than today is how you get a stagnant economy and misery for everyone but the very rich. It's how you depress consumption and investment. It's how you destroy a nation.
Money is not wealth. Money is a tool. The goal, at a macro level, is not to have people having big piles of money. Because money, in and of itself, is not that important. What matters is how the money is used. And the more it's used, the better. Money being used is consumption and investment.
What you call "a better system of stock trading" is called a "bond". It's debt and works similarly to how you described except the reward % is typically fixed.
Can you please stop making up your own economics? A currency is an asset. End. Of. Story.
Deflation is a directional property of an exchange rate between a pair of assets.
By "used" you mean traded. And yes trade increasing (of which consumer spending is a kind of trading) is a good thing. You only get that with volatility. This can be created through an inflation but dually it is also created through deflation.
There is nothing wrong or immoral about a particular asset going up or down in price relative to another asset.
This unscientific stance of considering all deflation as immoral is based on absolutely nothing except emotional propaganda.
You have provided exactly zero proofs verifying that any and all deflation in a currency is a bad thing. And you will never be able to provide such a "proof" because it does not exist.
Let's see if you are even capable of constructing a proper intellectual retort. My doubts run high.
So, that's potentially about $85B per year in US spending vs 2020 global revenue of $275B. Would it be fair to say then that two thirds of Apple's planned net "investments" are outside the US?
This is fantastic. Apples devices continue to be so groundbreaking (M1), it’s exciting that their culture of innovation and excellence will be spread more throughout the country. They will further seed the innovation hubs in all these places. I think it’s smart too, to gain new perspectives and tap new talent that doesn’t want to move to San Jose area.
Well that's a surprise - the Biden administration cracks down on big tech, and Boom! Apple commits to invest 430B$ in the US economy!
That's just a scaled-up version of pink-washing - Look, apple is so great, we can't dismantle it for being a monopoly! Now run and do something bad to the real villains like Amazon!
They can start by honestly and fully paying their taxes.
I'm probably reading too much into this, but it feels like this and other corporate announcements are channeling a pretty substantial shift in political-economic mood, theory-space or whatnot. They seem to be justifying themselves in ways that were previously unnecessary.
If Monetarism really is being abandoned, I predict unpredictable changes to economic thinking across the board. It was definitely impactful on the way in. I suppose unicorns zooming past the $trn mark is connected too.
The "cash accumulation" aspect of FAANG economies is (IMO) hard to digest in terms of economic theory. Rather that existing to finance economic activity, these companies make stock markets look like they exist solely for liquidity: cashing out VCs, compensating executives, etc. There is no "I need $1bn to build a new factory or something." There is no equity/debt ratio. Most of the texbook (at least mine, from circa 2003) doesn't apply. Apple/etc have plenty of cash, and don't need capital to expand either way. Economics has surprisingly little (new) to say about why dividends aren't happening, the difference between buybacks & dividends or cash accumulation generally.
I can think ways to "story" cash accumulation. Eg, instead of investors getting dividends and buying Vanguard or Bitcoin, FAANGs might as well just buy the securities on their behalf. This could be an argument, but I haven't heard it made. I'm not advocating it, just eg.
A "hostile" story might be that Apple are hogging all the capital that should be available for Tesla or some other company that actually needs capital.
In any case, I suspect there is more pressure to invest big sums than we know.
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[ 4.4 ms ] story [ 258 ms ] threadhttps://www.stock-analysis-on.net/NASDAQ/Company/Apple-Inc/A...
If I add up the entries of the "federal" line, I get $69 billion for the 5 columns 2020, 2019, 2018, 2017, 2016. Am I doing something wrong here? This is only the federal tax, not even the state tax, which would probably count into "domestic corporate income taxes" too.
IDK I dont know much about US tax law, financial reports, or the like. So maybe I did something wrongly. It'd be interesting how they obtained that figure in the press release.
"...who has a duty to shareholders to, you know, not pay more taxes than they have to..."
Let's make shareholders rich. It'll all trickle down from there...
EDIT: sure - downvote me all you want. The question is still around.
If you spend 50% of your income every year and stick the rest into the stock market and get 6% or so after inflation, you can sustain your spending without working after about twelve years.
If you spend 90% of your income every year and stick the rest into the stock market and get 6% or so after inflation, you can sustain your spending without working after about forty years.
It's all to say that being a shareholder matters in a hugely different way depending on your income. The disparity is worse when you look at how you can sustain higher volatility once you're already wealthy.
You're asking why can't people just be shareholders, but I think you're asking why it isn't enough that everyone can be shareholders. The reason is that being a shareholder only matters for those already making a ton.
There are more categories than the ultra rich and the incredibly poor. Stop that.
A lot of people can save 10-20% in stocks (such as via index funds.) A lot of people would rather not do this and still complain and point sticks at "the rich."
What can you do?
"The reason is that being a shareholder only matters for those already making a ton."
Is simply wrong and nonsensical. I don't make a ton, I am not ultra rich, it matters a lot to me to be a shareholder. It matters because that way I get to make money when "they" do.
Making $50k and spending $45k versus making $90k and spending $45k.
"Getting rich via investment depends on having income above a threshold which is set by the cost of living."
It's just not necessary to talk about getting rich. Getting rich is not relevant in this context. You made claims that are blatantly false that are part of the ever tiresome either rich or poor-dichotomy.
Most people can save money and invest that money in a way that makes them shareholders.
This sounds like a strawman because GP wasn't making any claims about whether it's bad or not. Moreover, it's perfectly reasonable to expect that each individual tax payer to pay as little tax as possible. eg. are you going to claim all tax eligible tax credits/deductions on this year's returns?
Companies (and people), one way or another, will always have to be expected to be greedy. This is why i'm pro-capitalism and pro-government. We can't hope for corporations to _not_ be greedy just because it's "possible". We have to expect/assume they are, and act accordingly.
Just like we can't give government entities absolute power. Checks and balances are needed in all of this. Reality is messy.
Do you see another way?
It kept dropping since I started and maybe one day it'll rise but I just enjoy taking some sort of ownership of my own work.
You always want to tax shareholders when a company gets popular in the media but it's hard to reimburse shareholders when the company goes down...
Are you paying more taxes than you are required to?
I think you're misreading my comment. It wasn't meant to shame buffet/gates for not paying more taxes, it was to point out that even they are going to act in their self interest in terms of paying taxes. ie. they won't pay more taxes than they need do.
100% agreed.
> who has a duty to shareholders to, you know, not pay more taxes than they have to
I don't believe they have any such duty. Corporate charitable giving is a really big thing.
Is it? I'd expect most of it is driven by actually valuing the charity. If we frame even the charitable stuff as profit-driven, it just reinforces the idea of some duty towards profit.
[0] Not suggesting you didn't read it.
Ultimately it's the responsibility of politicians and the voters who elect them to fix this.
They can announce this now and change their mind as they please, right? I'm not sure about Apple's track record on things like this, they may be good, but they could just slowly pull or decrease funding, and we probably won't even hear about it in the future, or am I missing something?
However you are correct in that TSMC still owns and operates its older node fabs. Today's cutting edge fab is tomorrow's legacy fab producing no-longer cutting edge commodity parts. This is why Apple won't buy any fabs or fab operators themselves.
I guess as long as Apple thinks they can remain the highest bidder at TSMC and China doesn't invade there is no reason to think their supply is threatened.
https://www.theverge.com/2021/3/23/22347250/intel-new-factor...
1. Getting some good press before Congress decides to do something in regards to the app store model.
2. Apple is reading the winds, seeing that Chinese supply chains may be politically constrained, and preparing for that future.
3. Apple is reading the winds, seeing that Chinese supply chains may be politically constrained, and announcing this investment so they can continue to have Chinese supply chains after a good PR move.
And…$430 billion over 5 years is a lot, but what if it influences tax or tariff rates just a bit in your direction over a 10-year period? Because that could be worth it, especially, again, if you were going to set up that new campus anyway.
Regardless of what?
This spend was probably in the books, so let’s wrap it in a nice bow before Congressional hearings.
They've realized that perhaps, just perhaps, they could afford to have more than one large corporate campus at their scale of fuck you money. Which gives them wider access to talent and actually reduces headaches such spiraling cost of living forcing salaries to also spiral upwards and also being expected to solve housing crises locally.
Being solely located in one of the most expensive areas in the United States does seem a bit absurd if you can avoid it. Based on Cook's statements about returning to the office, it seems like they value being physically proximate more than the immense savings that moving the workers who could be remote to remote.
Perhaps 'plethora' or 'multitude'.
Industry Clusters are often historical, so it always strikes me as strange when I see comments like this one that make a case for how misguided it was for tech companies to cluster in Silicon Valley and tolerate the high cost of living.
That line of thinking misplaces causes and effects so that they’re hilariously backwards.
Silicon Valley is a innovative place because of an extensive history of educational institutions, research facilities, and other market conditions that simply did not physically manifest in any other place.
On top of all that, the software industry has one of the lowest COGS (cost of goods sold) of any major industry. Facebook’s sales per employee is close to $2 million [1]. The fact that their SV employees cost hundreds of thousands of dollars more than employees is quite nearly irrelevant. Someone that’s 10 or 20 percent more productive will make up that labor cost difference by bringing in 10 or 20% more revenue, so it doesn’t really make sense for Facebook to abandon the best talent pools in search of cheaper rent or wages.
Tech giants are building out in Austin for its specific traits, and they don’t seem to mind that it’s rapidly becoming expensive and congested just like California. The question that might be asked is: why is Apple in Austin instead of Houston or Dallas or Nashville or Omaha?
[1] https://csimarket.com/stocks/FB-Revenue-per-Employee.html
The anti building laws of California are by far the biggest reasons housing is so expensive. Even if Austin gets pricey, you can always drive into the city.
As someone who left California, I will say no one in their right mind should live there. No matter how much you earn, you'll never realistically out earn the cost of living. I found myself quickly deep in credit card debt trying to be cool in California. It's just a horrible place to live, I had to estrange myself from my family to move, and it was absolutely worth it. Anyone who tries to make you live in such a horrible place does not care about you at all.
People are also phenomenally nicer in other cities, I was shocked at how easy it was to meet my girlfriend once I got to Chicago. It's as if Chicago's this amazing City where people understand you need to work to get things you want instead of thinking you're entitled to everything.
Anyway, with remote work now being seen as viable I can see the idea of having expensive big offices becoming antiquated.
So many of these corporate investment announcements are really "look at what we were already going to do".
Amazon HQ2 anyone?
It seems like a pretty high risk situation for them and has chilling effects elsewhere (content restrictions on Apple TV). It also damages their brand ethos around privacy. CCP pressure on Taiwan and TSMC is also a concern I'd be thinking about if I was them.
I wish Apple or govt would fund similar fab/s in the US - hell just build it with stimi or huge tax breaks and TSMC can still hold the IP and profit, just have enough onshore knowledge to run it in isolation if needed.
CCP hitting TSMC in their first strike would be a hell of a whammy, even if mutually destructive.
I dont think infrastructure is the root of our (US) problem. We do have a skills, and talent gap. not just in "tech jobs" like many people think but at factory floor level as well.
Even if they could open the factories tomorrow finding people to fill those jobs will be hard.
This is the current Democrat definition of the word where everything from health care to education is "infrastructure", that is not what the average person would consider to be "infrastructure".
Healthcare and Schools are not "infrastructure", "infrastructure" would be Roads, Power, Communications, Basic Utilities, etc etc etc.
>> Just consider the process of applying for an SBIR or finding a job or starting a startup or getting from SF to San Jose, etc.
Given that California is the least business friendly state in the union, in fact it is down right hostile to business I would image doing anything in CA is pretty hard
Yes, well we as a developer community can never let up on Apple and Google's app store models being legally reprehensible.
We are quite literally the most negatively affected community by these monopolies over general consumer's devices.
We need to be the "force to be reckoned with" here and constantly petitioning politicians for action else get campaigned AGAINST electronically (our domain).
I would say that the app store model negatively affects a growing "small software business" sector of the economy which will only continue to grow as a stable pillar of the modern middle class.
In other words, this is only becoming that much more of a critically important issue.
It's called an office park
I dont like how Apple spin this as investment in the headline, when it is clearly contribution. If you buy something at Walmart, or any of your daily needs, is that an investment in US?
And I dont know how that $430B is calculated.
Direct Spend with American Suppliers are mostly Corning for Front Glasses, Qualcomm for Modem and Patents. These two alone is close to $50B in five years.
Even if Apple spend $10B on Datacenter and $10B on Apple TV ( They dont ), Likely including all their employees salary, Rent for Apple Retail, basically every single dollar spend within US. The numbers still doesn't add up.
It reads to me Apple is doing their PR pieces on their contribution to US because Congress is now looking at them as enemies.
Ita because paying US people for that work is better for the personal development of (otherwise underemployed) US people than paying non-US people.
I wouldn't expect this to create that many jobs in manufacturing, it seems more like engineering and creative work, with a promise to prefer US suppliers, assuming they exists.
Barring a major transformation, I don't see Apple ever operating a factory, whether in the US or overseas.
If a company opens an office overseas and hires people, we call it foreign direct investment. Using the same math for domestic investment seems alright. It's money being pumped into the local economy, after all.
From an accounting perspective, when a business spends money on a factory it’s an investment since you end up with an asset on the balance sheets. But the same is true of spending on inventory. There are also intangible investments that don’t end up on balance sheets (like writing software) and for high tech companies that can be pretty substantial.
You could simplify this to “Apple says they’re going to spend a lot of money in the US.” Okay, I guess that’s good?
You can argue yes, if you pay Walmart $50 for eggs and stuff. That means Walmart pays taxes (goes to the Gov), Walmart pays employees (so they can buy other stuff), Walmart buys a product (paying every individual person from shipping to receiving, etc). Opposite would be saying going to Canada and buying it all, and all you would pay would be an import fee. Or buying something from Aliexpress and getting free shipping, which is probably a net value on the US economy.
But you can also argue no, cause it's so small that it is almost insignificant.
This tax-break-if-you-locate-here thing is a longstanding scam against politicians by companies.
https://www.nbcnews.com/business/business-news/corporate-tax...
These tax incentives should be structured as follows:
1. Do your payroll and pay your payroll taxes (FICA, Federal and State unemployment, whatever).
2. Submit your payroll tax receipts to the state incentive operation.
3. Get a rebate of some percentage of that payroll tax.
In other words, no tax-break payments until people get actually paid.
This incentivizes the company to do what the state wants: employ people in good jobs. If the company gets a "better offer" from some other place and moves, then the state doesn't get completely screwed over.
Any community with half a functioning government should give tax breaks to get these kinds of jobs from such a reputable company.
Increased homelessness from rapid gentrification
Why do you think domestic investment is so economically useless that it must be a charitable act?
Cupertino is announcing spend. Spending here is better for people here, ceteris paribus, than spending there. If they announced $430bn in new Southeast Asian contracts, there would be a twin top comment lamenting Apple's lack of domestic spending.
GP never implied that it was "useless" at all. Your question (to use some more Latin) is a total non-sequitur.
>there would be a twin top comment lamenting Apple's lack of domestic spending.
Yes, different people have different opinions.
The announcement uses the word investment 17 times. Reading that as a charity pitch requires a few logical leaps.
Companies announce foreign direct investment all the time. Nobody thinks they're trying to look like a charity.
>The accelerated commitment will fund a new North Carolina campus and *job-creating investments* in innovative fields like silicon engineering and 5G technology
other pull quotes from the article
>Apple is doubling down on our commitment to US innovation and manufacturing with a generational investment reaching *communities across all 50 states*
>Apple is the largest taxpayer in the US and has paid almost $45 billion in domestic corporate income taxes over the past five years alone.
> designed to prepare students for careers in hardware engineering and silicon chip design — to engineering programs at *Historically Black Colleges and Universities* across the country.
>bringing *clean energy and high-paying jobs to local communities across the country*.
If someone wants to see that as charity, it speaks more to them than anything else. (And claiming your patronage was an act of charity would be rightfully seen as a diminishment of said business.)
>If someone wants to see that as charity, it speaks more to them than anything else.
what does it say about you that you're so intent on absolving a corporate entity of its own disingenuity? like do you work for apple?
I wonder if you could do some analytics on comments and measure whether things have actually gotten worse. Finding a metric might be difficult. I suppose you could measure what percent of comments are from newer users over time, which is probably correlated.
I would say users likes anon_tor_12345 are more of an exception on the HN but they are they rule on reddit.
> I wonder if you could do some analytics on comments and measure whether things have actually gotten worse.
HN is really good at flagging bad actors. Curious to see what % of posts get flagged and compared to historical trends to see if things are really declining.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and sticking to the rules when posting here, we'd be grateful.
...
>anon_tor_12345
lol
Again, a non-sequitur. Even if they read "investment" as "tea party" 17 times, they still never said or implied that it was useless.
The Apple article is obviously trying to paint the investments as acts of goodwill. Not many people would expect anything else, it's just good PR. "Charity" might be an exaggeration, but can't you see why it could rub people the wrong way?
that's not what op (the person you're responding to) is saying at all. they're simply saying that apple disguises its infrastructure spending as charity and that that's off-putting. in fact it's not charity and furthers their own goals.
it'd be like me claiming to be a philanthropist because i had to a build a road connecting my factory to my mine that incidentally connects towns along the way. note this is example is right on the nose because this is exactly what corporations do.
Except it doesn't. It uses the word "investment" 17 times in the announcement. If someone reads this as a charity pitch they're doing mental gymnastics.
Apple is not even doing the whole "Made in the USA" schtick, where companies imply they're taking patriotic pain for the good of the country. This is fully pitched as a competitive play. An investment to yield returns.
This announcement makes it sound like it's something amazingly special they do. But in fact, any company throughout history has invested a certain percentage of their revenue, just like Apple is now doing.
They aren't claiming to be investing more or less than anyone else. They are simply advertising their plans.
I think Apple's "amazing" infomercials are over the top, but this press release seems anodyne.
People talk about companies the same way a hunter-gatherer applies animism to trees for example. Companies are not people, they can’t be cynic nor greedy they just are what they were created to be. Profit machines.
Apple is extremely good at being. High returns on invested capital, huge moat, etc...
If they did their massive campus in Eastern Europe they would get a lot of cheap smart talent, cheap building and probably a favourable tax treatment (if they needed even more of that).
Replace with Canary Islands, Cyprus or Malta if you want somewhere with nice weather.
This is part PR, part gaining political favours.
Tax breaks stimulate innovation and investments.
Also, it is a very low level misconception that paying local taxes is how you contributing to the local community. No. Investing is already contributing to the local community. The business will build campus there, and hire people there, and also increase other local businesses surround the campus. And those people work for them pay income taxes there and also pay consumer taxes there. Every local government understand these, that's why they want to attract investments and give their tax breaks, because investments alone bring benefits to the local community.
It would be extremely stupid for any local government to say: Hey we don't you invest hundred millions in our community, unless you pay full taxes. Lol.
Phrases....
That's the point. It isn't. The OP was asking why it's therefore being sold as one.
Companies are more than welcome to make themselves at home iff they pay their dues, and should not be welcome if they don't.
What is really trickle down for the society? The dead loop between more taxes and economic stagnation.
Companies will seek the lowest taxes in an area that suits them. If they're building in America, it's because it behooves them to build in America. There are lots of places they can go to lower taxes, but they're not competitive.
So you still have companies who are VOLUNTARILY building industry in places with high taxes, because it behooves them. Can you see how a race to the bottom in this regard is damaging? They're already committed to paying high taxes, its just a matter of how high. So—do you really want to be the place that cheats yourself out of the most income, for a company that really doesn't care if they settle in your county, the next one over, or the one across the country?
The minute you become noncompetitive, the company will move, and your countrymen are the people who paid for it. The real winner? the company, who got to hang onto more of their vast profits. :-) Apple committed almost $100B a year. And places are fighting over... how much tax revenue? there's plenty of room for fair taxation.
You don't get rich by giving things away (unless if you've figured out how to make this possible—in which case, please ready a room for me :-))
> I'll wait for an external audit of whether they're paying all the relevant ..
They will be paying minimum legal taxes possible not maximum possible. If this is something one need to feel outraged they can start early and not wait for reports/audits.
If this announcement was in India or China, folks would be grabbing pitchforks that Apple is sending jobs overseas. So they’re bring net new tech jobs here, and your response feels like “damned if you do, damned if you don’t”
I mean, I wish it were not, I wish it were normal for U.S. business to invest in the U.S., but here we are.
If companies start investing their money domestically then excess savings will fall, deflationary pressures will be gone and the economy will start growing quickly again and that means wages will grow too.
They are a US company, reaping the tax benefits of that nexus. If they'd been an EU company, they would have paid a lot more in various taxes (including higher wage taxes) over the last 40 years. IOW, they would not be as wealthy a company today.
Tons of countries tax worldwide income.
i've read some rhetoric somewhere that deflationary money is a terrible thing for the economy since it reflects in asset prices and makes you more concerned with saving. From my perspective, that's a very good economic consequence and would stop all these boom bust cycles that we seems to be creeping up at irregular intervals of massive spending.
A better system of stock trading would be bonding. When i buy a stock, the money is locked into a contract that is reimbursed to me after the purchase period. say i buy $100 worth of Tesla for a 1 year stock period. At the end of that lease, i will recieve my $100 back and Tesla may reward me with a % based on the performance of that year. I have no liquidity but my only 'Loss' is the loss of other rewards i could have gained by betting in another industry or company. Everything being completely liquid allows for HFT and the banking industry to drain our economic fecundity by placing it in the realm of fairy-land instead of investments in infrastructure, energy generation and manufacturing.
It is very simple why this is not a good policy.
Let's say you are a software engineer working on some software product/service. You are working hard on that software, adding features, fixing issues, maintaining it, etc. The buyer pays you $100 today for that software.
Tomorrow you release a new version, with lots of upgrades and new capabilities. The buyer for this software says "my money should be worth more tomorrow than it is today" so they offer only $80 for the new version. Boom -- your work is worth less every day!
Your point is not pedantic at all and in fact completely negates the other commenters counterpoint made to your initial argument.
The buying power of the entity you are exchanging in has changed -- for everyone. This absolutely does not diminish your work. It is literally equivalent to being paid in many more bitcoin in 2012 versus today.
I am sure there are valid critiques of allowing deflation. But, as of yet a solid one has not been provided in this thread.
It would be interesting to see if anyone can offer other sources or arguments against this pro-savings, deflation-allowable, economy.
Allowing natural volatility into the value of any asset that is traded, including the USD, likely resolves to a more natural equilibrium in the economy, no?
Yes, this is because of the interchangeability of the value of an asset declining and the fact that no one is buying it. No different than a stock price in free fall. Why is it in free fall? Because no one wants it.
Artificial infinite inflation takes away from the buying power of especially younger generations (but average people in general). It inflates the supposed price of assets (in terms of the inflated exchange asset, e.g., USD) which makes it much more difficult for newcomers to gain access to the necessary amount of buying power otherwise.
Think of it like inflating bitcoin. True, bitcoin is worth more. But, it takes a lot more work and time to get more bitcoin. This actually causes deflation to people's labor value and thus their buying power and leverage.
And not all assets will inflate equally. And some assets will receive government subsidies (this is an increasing phenomenon due to the inflating economy) because they are considered "critical" to society e.g., gasoline, milk, and green energy.
Overall, allowing things to deflate and inflate more naturally actually increases volatility which is actually what will increase economic velocity. Trading will increase, and interest will increase because of profitable trading, and thus investment will increase.
So, no, the current artificial and centralized system that thinks it can outgame game-theory is just stupid.
It's just Neo-Liberal/Neo-Conservative hippie baby boomer nonsense to concentrate wealth and power into an aristocratic elite empowered by trillions of dollars of managed retirement portfolios. They simply do not want to allow for natural volatility so that their managed assets are always increasing. It's absolute insanity.
EDIT:
Not that my above comment was perfect, but let me attempt to be more succint.
> Monetary appreciation only helps
Appreciation of an asset only helps the holders of said asset. But "appreciation" is always an exchange rate. Appreciated relative to what?
> A deflationary environment explicitly benefits creditors.
And this is where my contention lies. This dogmatic condemnation of deflation ever being allowed to happen. Temporary deflation or even deflation for some extended period of time is not a bad thing.
Economic velocity runs on volatility and not what one currency or asset is doing relative to another. Inflating and deflating exchange rates only increase volatility. But, truly, only if both types of relationships are allowed and are not artificially snuffed out by government and/or central bank intervention.
And you assume that creditors are the only ones holding an asset? Credit is only one kind of exchange. Spending is another. Stock trading is another. They all depend on volatility.
Thus, I am not arguing for inflation or deflation. I am arguing for the greatest amount of allowance for natural volatility.
> in your proposed monetary environment.
I see that you assumed that I was arguing for constant monetary appreciation. I was arguing that there is nothing wrong with monetary appreciation.
It seem that you and others are deadset on arguing that all deflation is immoral.
My above comment mentions the common root of such views.
> Much like it's difficult for newcomers to buy large amounts of bitcoin.
Yes, I should clarify my bitcoin comments. Bitcoin is deflationary relative to USD (where most "newcomers" are coming from).
BUT, to add substance to my point it should also be noted that there are coins that outperform Bitcoin and are thus deflationary in their relationship to Bitcoin. A newcomer holding these would actually have more purchasing power.
I clarify this to stress that at the end of the day: consumer spending, loans, credit, etc. are all trading. And trading is what makes the economy go around. Volatility is good.
> Monetary appreciation only helps
Appreciation of an asset only helps the holders of said asset. But "appreciation" is always an exchange rate. Appreciated relative to what?
> A deflationary environment explicitly benefits creditors.
And this is where my contention lies. This dogmatic condemnation of deflation ever being allowed to happen. Temporary deflation or even deflation for some extended period of time is not a bad thing.
Economic velocity runs on volatility and not what one currency or asset is doing relative to another. Inflating and deflating exchange rates only increase volatility. But, truly, only if both types of relationships are allowed and are not artificially snuffed out by government and/or central bank intervention.
And you assume that creditors are the only ones holding an asset? Credit is only one kind of exchange. Spending is another. Stock trading is another. They all depend on volatility.
Thus, I am not arguing for inflation or deflation. I am arguing for the greatest amount of allowance for natural volatility.
> in your proposed monetary environment.
I see that you assumed that I was arguing for constant monetary appreciation. I was arguing that there is nothing wrong with monetary appreciation.
It seem that you and others are deadset on arguing that all deflation is immoral.
My above comment mentions the common root of such views.
> Much like it's difficult for newcomers to buy large amounts of bitcoin.
Yes, I should clarify my bitcoin comments. Bitcoin is deflationary relative to USD (where most "newcomers" are coming from).
BUT, to add substance to my point it should also be noted that there are coins that outperform Bitcoin and are thus deflationary in their relationship to Bitcoin. A newcomer holding these would actually have more purchasing power.
I clarify this to stress that at the end of the day: consumer spending, loans, credit, etc. are all trading. And trading is what makes the economy go around. Volatility is good.
Aggregate demand and supply is very much affected by currency and commodity appreciation, contrary to what you're saying. Additionally there is volatility, and there is price discovery. Today, right now. Things are already how you want them to be. The dollar depreciates and appreciates against commodities and other currencies all the time.
Bingo! But, I do not see anyone complaining about this "only benefiting the creditors".
> econ 101
To be fair, I find a reference to very weakly approximating models of reality, taught to ignorant and naïve students for the sake of starting them off somewhere, to be slightly disingenuous.
> Appreciation due to contracting supply.
Contracting supply is not the only reason for appreciation. If we take that fact into consideration then your causality arrow of 'low monetary velocity' -> 'supply shrinks' -> 'appreciation' is one of many possible paths. Therefore, deflation is not what causes appreciation, it is in of itself a description of that very appreciation. Again, appreciation RELATIVE to something. You seem to be ignoring this very important fact.
You also created circular thinking. In a prior comment you said the deflation causes monetary velocity to fall, and then you say monetary velocity causes appreciation. Appreciation is where the deflation comes from. So, which is it? Deflation pops into existence and causes monetary velocity to fall? Or a magical appreciation occurs from a slowing monetary velocity and causes deflation to occur?
> In a fractional reserve system
Yes, in a central banking system the 'monetary velocity' is artificially controlled. Almost completely. You can push money into parts of the economy to inflate things at a whims notice. Then everyone loves that the "values" of investment vehicles are bigger than they were yesterday.
So, you are effectively only arguing for the status quo. But the status quo is not working. Is this really your best argument?
> volatility, and there is price discovery
Ah, word games. Even if someone might provide definitional differences, there is no objective real-world difference between the two things.
---
Here is what I argue for:
Not allowing natural (not managed) volatility (or 'monetary velocity') -- MOVEMENT -- is a fool's game. You cannot beat basic game theory that is dependent on the biology of humans. You just can't. There is no fancy economic jargon that can allow you to. There is no monetary policy that will enable you to. You can pitch and sell artificial manipulation of the economy (via economic theories or political ideologies) but you are only pitching bubbles.
Allowing natural periods of deflation in the economy allows for volatility, trade, flux, interest, investment, wins, ... and here is the most important word: losses.
Loss. It allows for someone to actually lose.
These hippie boomers have never had to lose anything in their lives. The artificial manipulation of the markets and the economy reflects this mindset and attitude.
There is more than one currency and that fact alone negates any possible argument against allowing deflation to occur naturally in the economy. If it occurs because of temporary "contracting supply" (of one currency) then so be it.
The dollar, and its associated monetary policy, isn't something that has been perverted by evil external forces. I'm arguing the 'status quo' because thats how it was intentionally designed and thats how it intentionally works. Not wasting my time describing some fanciful alternative perfect system
Asset trading is about as natural to human civilization as you can get. Having a socially accepted intermediary asset is not much beyond that. Simply saying its not a "natural phenomenon" is not a mathematical or scientific self-validating statement. It's just a statement.
> it's their currency.
Yes, and literally anyone can create a currency out of thin air. Other people will use it if they decide to assign it value.
> Its existence is inherently political
No, It's existence is civilizational. It technologically fulfills the ability to have high transaction rates of an increasing population that other assets can not satisfy. the ability to transact more easily and more quickly is what determines the bounds of the potential of an economy. So, of course, all major civilizations have utilized this technological tool for political means. As a way to increase and concentrate power through economics.
This is fundamentally different from intermediary assets being constructed initially as a political tool. Money is technology. It is not politics. Like literally any other technology it can be used politically.
> isn't something that has been perverted by evil external forces
I am not sure what insanity you are trying to project onto me, but I never even came close to implying anything along these lines. You should attempt to avoid fallacious arguments a little harder.
> some fanciful alternative perfect system
You mean like your supposedly perfectly controlled and singular monetary systems with artificial inflation hoses? Have you seen the economy?
If this is your dream economic system then why not live in China with even more inflation and more centralization? Or maybe you already do. Genuine question, nonetheless.
Even with your assumption suppose you accept their offer. The $80 received should in turn be able to purchase something that was worth $100 dollars yesterday. The nominal value may have gone down but the quantity of goods and services you can buy with it is the same.
Deflationary thinking meant everyone expects prices to be lower tomorrow, so no one spent money on needed items and simply waited to make purchases to save money. This slowed down the economy into a death spiral that they still are climbing out of. Mortgages became crushing. You can't get a raise. Interest and deflation work together to make debt nearly inescapable.
The point of money is to be spent, i.e. facilitate the simple transfer of value. An excellent example of the direct damaging effects of deflation is bitcoin. No one spends it. It has utterly failed at its goal to become a primary mechanism to transfer value. Everyone expects its value to keep increasing so it is almost never transferred (to the point that hodling and never spending became a meme). Slowing down the exchange of money is what kills an economy.
The way inflation is calculated is quite flawed from my understanding (they don't include rent/mortgage payments or college tuition - prices of which have exploded in the past two decades).
You are fundamentally misunderstanding the purpose of the modern central banking nonsense that the parrots you are replying to merely repeat without any understanding whatsoever of how absolutely devastating it is to the economic stability of the middle class.
Just for illustration, imagine if you know that you can buy 2 rolls of toilet papers 2 months later for the price of 1 toilet paper today, and you don't have an immediate need for toilet paper, then most likely you'd wait.
Spendings is what drives the economy and it's the circulation and liquidity that help the economy becomes more productive.
This is called a sale and happens all the time in consumer spending. It is a well known phenomenon that many people (not all) will wait to purchase when they have more purchasing power. But it is also well known that a subset of the population will not wait.
I am not sure how you perceive your arguments as being a rigorous support of your position or a rigorous critique against the opposing position. It is truly mysterious.
Money is not wealth. Money is a tool. The goal, at a macro level, is not to have people having big piles of money. Because money, in and of itself, is not that important. What matters is how the money is used. And the more it's used, the better. Money being used is consumption and investment.
What you call "a better system of stock trading" is called a "bond". It's debt and works similarly to how you described except the reward % is typically fixed.
Can you please stop making up your own economics? A currency is an asset. End. Of. Story.
Deflation is a directional property of an exchange rate between a pair of assets.
By "used" you mean traded. And yes trade increasing (of which consumer spending is a kind of trading) is a good thing. You only get that with volatility. This can be created through an inflation but dually it is also created through deflation.
There is nothing wrong or immoral about a particular asset going up or down in price relative to another asset.
This unscientific stance of considering all deflation as immoral is based on absolutely nothing except emotional propaganda.
You have provided exactly zero proofs verifying that any and all deflation in a currency is a bad thing. And you will never be able to provide such a "proof" because it does not exist.
Let's see if you are even capable of constructing a proper intellectual retort. My doubts run high.
Precisely because it did happen a long time ago. None of what is pointed out is new. It is basically celebrating Apple is an US business.
https://americansfortaxfairness.org/issues/corporate-taxes/h...
0. So how many trillions will be laundered and hidden overseas?
1. Is Apple really just launching the eWallet, the world's first self-laundering wallet with domestic currency support?
Might be.
$57bn of that was income [1], so about 40% of spend. Which lines up with the 41% of revenues Apple gets from the U.S. [2].
[1] https://www.apple.com/newsroom/pdfs/FY20_Q4_Consolidated_Fin...
[2] https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2020/10/apple-reports-fourth-...
The big market distortion is coming. Get prepared for absolute insanity.
That's just a scaled-up version of pink-washing - Look, apple is so great, we can't dismantle it for being a monopoly! Now run and do something bad to the real villains like Amazon!
They can start by honestly and fully paying their taxes.
If Monetarism really is being abandoned, I predict unpredictable changes to economic thinking across the board. It was definitely impactful on the way in. I suppose unicorns zooming past the $trn mark is connected too.
The "cash accumulation" aspect of FAANG economies is (IMO) hard to digest in terms of economic theory. Rather that existing to finance economic activity, these companies make stock markets look like they exist solely for liquidity: cashing out VCs, compensating executives, etc. There is no "I need $1bn to build a new factory or something." There is no equity/debt ratio. Most of the texbook (at least mine, from circa 2003) doesn't apply. Apple/etc have plenty of cash, and don't need capital to expand either way. Economics has surprisingly little (new) to say about why dividends aren't happening, the difference between buybacks & dividends or cash accumulation generally.
I can think ways to "story" cash accumulation. Eg, instead of investors getting dividends and buying Vanguard or Bitcoin, FAANGs might as well just buy the securities on their behalf. This could be an argument, but I haven't heard it made. I'm not advocating it, just eg.
A "hostile" story might be that Apple are hogging all the capital that should be available for Tesla or some other company that actually needs capital.
In any case, I suspect there is more pressure to invest big sums than we know.