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Google could give it to schools with no heat or AC and outdated textbooks. Or help solve homelessness. Or fund fixing the country's bridges. "Sorry we really do
by yterdy 3y ago
Google could give it to schools with no heat or AC and outdated textbooks. Or help solve homelessness. Or fund fixing the country's bridges. "Sorry we really don't have the funds for more heads or ridiculous raises we're busy not being evil."
- _Algernon_ 3y agoGoogle is a public company. The money either goes to shareholders or to employing people. There is no conceivable world in which this money would have gone to any of those causes.
- naet 3y agoThere's a conceivable world where we restructure incentives around our current form of capitalism and tax codes to encourage extra money going into humanitarian causes, instead of being spent on arbitrary capital maneuvers like stock buybacks. Conceivable, but we probably won't get there anytime soon.
- fsargent 3y agoIt’s very simple, that’s what the government should fund. That’s what our tax should pay for. If you really want to manifesto, then just read about land value taxes, don’t tax anything except what we want to disincentivize and land, which doesn’t distort the market. But this is entirely off-topic for this thread.
- johnsonjo 3y agoIt sounds to me like you're explaining Tax Deductions through Charity which is already a thing.
- hobofan 3y agoI know that you probably meant to express that Google is the opposite to a public (= governmental) entity, but "private company" is not the term to express that. Google is a public company (= listed on the stock market for anyone to buy and sell), so the opposite of a private(ly owned) company.
- _Algernon_ 3y agoProbably mixed up private entity and public company. Fixed.
- losteric 3y agoFor-profit companies do philanthropy all the time. There is no requirement to divert money to shareholders (further, Google's not payingany dividends right now)
- brainwad 3y agoGoogle does stock buybacks instead. The last yearly buyback authorisation was for $70b, so the "yield" is around 4-5%. It's very much in the blue-chip, return-cash-to-investors phase of its corporate life.
- wizofaus 3y agoWell there's certainly a conceivable one, and it's one probably many would agree would be much nicer one to live in. But accepted, not a realistic one any time soon.
- ttymck 3y agoNo conceivable world you say?
- _Algernon_ 3y agoThat is indeed what I say
- bloppe 3y agoGoogle has a large charitable arm called google.org, but your point is mostly correct, although the money they pay to employees (and to the government in the form of payroll taxes) isn't being destroyed. It's just cycling around the economy, and many employees donate decent amounts of their paychecks to charity (Google does 1:1 matching and encourages this)
- nojvek 3y agoCEO would get outsed if the shareholders feel he’s not acting in the best interest to make returns. Capitalism is a best that needs insatiable ever growing revenue and profits.
- baruz 3y agoVote-holding shareholders in a two-class share company, ie, Schmidt, Brin, or Page. Pichai just has to avoid annoying Sergey and Larry, really.
- edanm 3y agoThat's not true. Google makes money for stockholders, and they do whatever they want with that money. Some of them also certainly give money to charity, etc. I don't know if we prefer a world in which Google itself made these kinds of contributions and not the people who own Google.
- BurningFrog 3y ago> Or help solve homelessness Google has tried building housing in Mountain View, but they can't permits easier than anyone else.
- johnsonjo 3y agoThere are 500k homeless people in the US alone [0]. Let's compare that to Google's net income (money gained after all expenses including taxes, etc.) for a quarter (quarter is 3 months with $70m on a good quarter and $30m on a bad one [1]). If we were to give every cent of Google's earnings to each homeless person in the USA then each homeless person could get a $46 pay check ((net_income_per_quarter / homeless_population) / 3 [2]) per month from Google on a good quarter and a $20 paycheck per month on a bad quarter [3]. But, you have to ask yourself what this sort of wild and crazy idea would cost to Google's bottom line. I'm no expert on that, but I assume it would not be good. This is just some simple back of the napkin math, but it shows how simply infeasible solving homelessness or poverty is even for a company as big as Google. This is why I usually believe solving homelessness can not be achieved by money alone, and just the scale of the problem makes it so intractable. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homelessness_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homelessness_in_the_United_Sta... [1]: https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/GOOGL/financials https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/GOOGL/financials [2]: https://www.wolframalpha.com/input?i=%2870000000+%2F+500000%29+%2F+3 https://www.wolframalpha.com/input?i=%2870000000+%2F+500000%... [3]: https://www.wolframalpha.com/input?i=%2830000000+%2F+500000%29+%2F+3 https://www.wolframalpha.com/input?i=%2830000000+%2F+500000%...
- sk5t 3y agoGoogle’s quarterly net income is in the $10 to $20Bn range. Take another whack at that math?
- johnsonjo 3y agoOkay I was wrong about that I was also wrong about the quarterly part the numbers were not per quarter but per year. Again back of the napkin and I’m glad to have people point out the flaws in my argument.
- BurningFrog 3y agoHomelessness is mainly caused by the physical reality of there being too few homes for the number of people. The good way to change that is to add more housing (let's ignore the option of removing people). Giving homeless people money doesn't end the physical reality at all. It can make some homeless people able to afford housing, but an equal number of housed people will replace them as homeless.