> OpenAI's losses might actually be attractive to certain investors from a tax perspective.
OpenAI is anyways seeking Govt Bailout for "National Security" reasons. Wow, I earlier scoffed at "Privatize Profits, Socialize Losses", but this appears to now be Standard Operating Procedure in the U.S.
So the U.S. Taxpayer will effectively pay for it. And not just the U.S. Taxpayer - due to USD reserve currency status, increasing U.S. debt is effectively shared by the world. Make billionaires richer, make the middle class poor. Make the poor destitute. Make the destitute dead. (All USAID cuts)
Kindly use the Supplemental Poverty Measure (SPM) - which accounts for government benefits (e.g., tax credits, SNAP), taxes, and expenses like medical costs.
This does not show your "steady downward trend", but has considerably fluctuated over the last few years. It is an increase to 12.9% in 2024, compared to 7.1% in 2020-21. Will need to wait till end of 2026 for the 2025 computation.
> Global poverty reduction has slowed to a near standstill, with 2020–2030 set to be a lost decade - World Bank.
"Slowed to a near standstill" means it's still moving in the right direction.
There may have been some global event in the 2020s that maybe had a bit of an impact on the global economy.
> Please note that if you exclude China, the trend of poverty reduction is laughable.
If you exclude the area of the world that used to be extremely poor but has benefitted massively from the wealth generated by creating products for the billionaires abroad, why would you exclude that?
There's already a lot that the US taxpayer is on the hook for that's a lot less valuable than a best on the next big thing in software, productivity, and warfare.
It shouldn't be the job of the US taxpayer to feed someone that doesn't want to work, study, or pass a drug test, and it absolutely shouldn't be the job of the US taxpayer to feed another country's citizens half a world away.
As intrinsically social animals, we have general obligations toward other people that precede our consent. How these play out in practice will be determined by the limitations and conditions of the situation. But in general, such obligations radiate outward based on proximity of relation.
Our first obligations are toward our immediate families. As the human race is essentially a large extended family, the obligations dissipate the further out we go. We do have a general obligation to help those in need, but this obligation is prioritized. In classical texts, this is called the ordo amoris or "order of love" (in the older, more technically accurate terminology, order of charity, where "charity" - from caritas - means willing the good of the other).
Now, to address your comment specifically...
> There's already a lot that the US taxpayer is on the hook for that's a lot less valuable than a best on the next big thing in software, productivity, and warfare.
For example? Whatever the benefits of LLMs, I find this relative exuberance unreasonable.
> It shouldn't be the job of the US taxpayer to feed someone that doesn't want to work,
In someone able-bodied and of sound mind refuses to work, then we don't have an obligation to support someone like that. This is true. In fact, it would be uncharitable to enable their laziness, because it harms the character and virtue of that person. Of course, in practice, if someone you have determined is able to work is found starving and in danger of death, for example, then it is unlikely they are merely lazy. Would a man of sound mind allow himself to starve?
The manner in which we deal with such cases is a prudential matter, not a matter or principle. We need to determine how best to satisfy the principle in the given circumstances, and there is room for debate here.
> it absolutely shouldn't be the job of the US taxpayer to feed another country's citizens half a world away.
If there is a humanitarian crisis somewhere in the world, for example, then there is a general obligation of the entire world to help those affected. How that happens, how that is coordinate, is a matter of prudence and implementation detail, as it were. Naturally, several factors enter the equation (proximity, wealth, etc).
> It shouldn't be the job of the US taxpayer to feed someone that doesn't want to work, study, or pass a drug test
This would make sense if every person was given similar opportunities, like providing quality education to all of our youngest and making higher education a mission rather than a business as a starter.
As a society we move at the speed of the weakest among us, we only move forward when we start lifting and helping the weakest and most vulnerable.
You also need to realize that not doing that work is also cause for other taxpayer money to be spent elsewhere, such as spending an average of 37k $ per incarcerated person, and that ignores all the damage that criminal might've caused, all the additional police staffing and personal security that is needed to be spent outside prisons, etc.
Those are complex systems, are you sure it wouldn't be better to spend the same gargantuan amount of money that's spent on millions of inmates and fighting crime into fighting the causes that make many fall into that?
Again, those are complex, but closed systems and the argument of "we shouldn't spend on X" often ignores the cost of not spending on X.
The US already spends 38% more than the OECD average on education per student, just lagging Luxembourg, Austria, Norway, etc - if you’re a student in America, you have access to plenty of resources.
You’re right that these are complex systems, and just pouring more tax dollars and more debt into them isn’t working. Portions of our society need to value education, value contributing to society instead of taking, and reject criminality - but those changes require more than blind spending.
It is true that throwing money at problems is a lazy and ineffective way to address them. American education is very well funded in general, but very poorly executed. There is absolutely no room for arguments about the lack of money where the US is concerned. It is shameful for Americans to make such arguments.
Much of the problem comes from a poor grasp of what education is and is for, and because of that, money and effort are not allocated properly. One source of the problem are various educational fads. I personally remember when computers were artificially jammed into school curricula for no good reason. There was absolutely no merit to what was being done. But how much do you think the companies selling that garbage made out?
Or consider the publishing industry that fleeces schools and students with 12978th editions of the same poorly-presented material packaged in overpriced books. Financially, education is quite cheap, but there are sectors of the economy devoted to convincing pedagogues and politicians that it isn't, and that what you need to do is buy in order to "change with the times". Sorry, but basic education isn't fast fashion. Materially, basic education is stable and cheap.
Another problem is that American culture is pragmatic to a fault. Americans have a long history of viewing education, particularly the university, with distaste, as some kind of "European", un-American, and aristocratic thing. This explains the appeal of the pragmatic turn of the university: you now go to university to "get a job". Of course, that isn't the core mission of the university, and most professions don't require anything the university might provide, especially not at these absurd costs (hence why GenZ is seeing something like a 1500% increase in pursuing trades).
We have a cultural momentum that must fizzle out or must be reshaped. Where the modern university specifically is concerned, its days may very well be numbered. It may very well be forced to undergo very painful changes, or crumble, with a new crop of smaller colleges taking their place. Where primary education is concerned, parents are increasingly taking their children out of the savage factory known as public education. This, too, may force public education to finally deal with its dysfunction, or collapse.
Let me phrase it this way for you. The best universities are in the US for a lot of things. But they don't scale.
In another way, the top talent gets Ferraris for their tuition, the rest gets a bike. In a lot of European countries everyone can get the Toyota Camry of education, decent but not world class. That does scale though.
Spending isn't everything, it's how you apply that spending.
For science/math would you rather go to Rome or MIT? I know which one I would pick if they cost the same. A lot of it is also the people you're surrounded by.
That's a meaningless stat in absolute terms, US lags other developed nations as % of GDP spending, and the level of primary and secondary education shows it. US adults lag in cognitive or even reading capabilities.
> … into fighting the causes that make many fall into that?
A morbid thought that would probably address the bulk of this: male birth control.
The backlash would be profound, it’ll never happen. But if there were a way to make a “perfect pill/shot/procedure” boys had maybe at birth to prevent unplanned pregnancies… just think about it.
I’m not even sure I’m advocating for it. Everyone says “education will fix all the things!” I think raising kids where the parents wanted to be parents would fix a whole lot, at least on the incarnation side.
And that wouldn’t be abused? We already means test access to basic necessities; you don’t think “access to producing offspring” wouldn’t be similarly gated?
Wouldn’t it be better for society if it were gated, at least compared to our current system which encourages those least able/suited to have children to have the greatest number of them? If we as a society are uncomfortable with society dictating how/when you have kids, society also shouldn’t be on the hook for providing for them - “no say, no pay”.
The modern welfare state is the compromise reached by capitalist democracies to stave off communist revolutions. If you’re going to kill of the welfare part, be ready for the uprising part.
That's where the surveillance and the militarized police force(s) come in. Especially the former now has reached extraordinary levels, given that almost all communication now is easily trackable.
Compare that to when we still had revolutions, where it was very hard for government to know what is going on, and to find individuals without a huge effort.
I think revolutions have become next to impossible, unless it is lead by significant parts of the elite that controls at least part of the apparatus.
That's not even counting the far more sophisticated propaganda methods, so that many of the affected people won't even begin to target the actual culprits but are lead to chase shadows, or one another.
We still have revolutions because if enough people go out on the street it doesn’t matter how good your surveillance state is. You can’t kill/arrest 25% of your population. That is why Russia/China/etc are so scared to let any protests begin even with 5 people because if they grow there comes a point it can’t be stopped with violence.
See Arab spring. It does not matter how many people go out in the street, unless the elites voluntarily give up control, as happened in East Germany (which I experienced). The only thing that matters is if influential parts of the elites want a change too.
> You can’t kill/arrest 25% of your population.
Unnecessary.
> That is why Russia/China/etc are so scared to let any protests begin
Especially Russia's issue is that lots of the elites want change too. But you also underestimate that what the population also does not want is a repeat of 1990s chaos, and Russian weakness.
You forgot gun control. Is it really a coincidence that the highest concentrations of rich people seem to be the places where citizens have the fewest rights to own guns?
Ridiculous "argument". You and your puny gun against organized forces, especially the military - laughable! The only one your privately owned guns threaten are other citizens.
OpenAI is anyways seeking Govt Bailout for "National Security" reasons. Wow, I earlier scoffed at "Privatize Profits, Socialize Losses", but this appears to now be Standard Operating Procedure in the U.S.
https://www.citizen.org/news/openais-request-for-massive-gov...
So the U.S. Taxpayer will effectively pay for it. And not just the U.S. Taxpayer - due to USD reserve currency status, increasing U.S. debt is effectively shared by the world. Make billionaires richer, make the middle class poor. Make the poor destitute. Make the destitute dead. (All USAID cuts)