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Show HN: How much is 13B euros?
Hi,
I made this page to contextualize 13 billion euros (or 14): an amount due to Ireland in an EU Apple tax case and all over the airwaves here this week. I use some pretty silly back-of-the-envelope type calculations (the same ones also repeated a lot in Ireland this week!).
These calculations aren't especially interesting, but at least they are present: you can see them, and you can change them. If you do - change the 13 billion to 14 billion for example, related numbers will flash with updates.
It's an example using calculang[1]: a language for calculations, and an example that focuses on a close connection between numbers that we read or share and formulas/workings behind those numbers.
I plan to do a separate Show HN about calculang perhaps when I have more docs and newer playground and gallery together, but Showing this page in case it's interesting, & happy if there is feedback!
Declan
[0] https://HowMuchIs13BillionEuros.com https://HowMuchIs13BillionEuros.com repo: https://github.com/declann/HowMuchIs13BillionEuros.com https://github.com/declann/HowMuchIs13BillionEuros.com
[1] https://calculang.dev https://calculang.dev
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- cruunchMuncher 2y ago[dead]
- elintknower 2y ago[flagged]
- bahador 2y agorelevant xkcd: https://xkcd.com/980/ https://xkcd.com/980/
- IggleSniggle 2y agoI love this one: https://mkorostoff.github.io/1-pixel-wealth/ https://mkorostoff.github.io/1-pixel-wealth/
- roblh 2y agoI was hoping for “a million vs. a billion” but this one is definitely more relevant.
- pornel 2y agoThis shows values per person in Ireland, but AFAIK the tax is from all European income, Apple has just channelled that through Irish subsidiary. Isle of Man is probably even richer in per capita money they've never seen.
- arlort 2y agoNo, this is just about how much apple has been taxed under Irish law so all the back taxes would go to the Irish government The source of the money originally being taxed doesn't matter
- badpun 2y agoApple, like other european giants, sends all its European business through Ireland, which is a convenient tax haven. Now, Ireland seems no longer happy being the tax haven, and Apple is forced to pay somewhat normal taxes.
- arlort 2y agoI'm not sure what the connection to my statement above is, wrong comment your replied to?
- amiga386 2y agoIreland is happy to be a tax haven and would like to continue being one - the magic phrase is "put on the green jersey" (and think of the nation's economic interest rather than demand fiscal transparency from Apple) But the EU isn't happy for Ireland to be one, and has forced it to close its dodgiest schemes as it also did with the Netherlands. Also, the EU hasn't said Ireland is a tax haven, it said it's a tax "black hole"
- soperj 2y agoIf Apple got a 13 billion dollar fine every single month, it would take 22 years for it to exhaust their networth.
- brigadier132 2y agoThis is a pointless statistic. I assume you mean market capitalization by net worth and if they were fined that much every month their market cap would immediately drop by 90% because their costs in paying fines would take away 90% of their profit.
- soperj 2y agoMost statistics are pointless. This is just a representation of what 13 billion is.
- lotsofpulp 2y agoWhy parrot things that are pointless? Market cap is not "net worth", so what was the point of the comparison?
- kman82 2y agoExactly. What a doodoo statement
- Aeolun 2y agoSo you are saying they could pay a 13B dollar fine every month and still make ~1B dollar profit?
- happyopossum 2y agoApple makes 5-7B/ mo in net revenue (roughly close enough to profit for this purpose), so no.
- brigadier132 2y agoInstead of asking a question why don't you just make your point?
- paxys 2y ago[flagged]
- nottorp 2y ago1 km of freeway is 10-40 million so 325-1300 km of freeway. 1 km of high speed train line is 20-60 million so 216-650 km of high speed train Ireland's healthcare spending was 22.3 Bn in 2023, so 13 Bn covers 7 months of healthcare for the country. I see the OP included "In € 2.24Bn National Childrens Hospitals? 5.8 National Childrens Hospitals" so they're on the right track. We're talking about state spending here so it's pointless to compare it to the price of a tablet IMO.
- ok_dad 2y ago> 1 km of high speed train line is 20-60 million so 216-650 km of high speed train In America, that's how much it costs to build a 30km elevated train that goes ~45km/h (and it isn't going to be finished until ~25 years after work started): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skyline_(Honolulu)#Revised_schedule_and_estimates https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skyline_(Honolulu)#Revised_sch... I am totally for trains, BTW, but I wish we'd hire EU and/or JP train builders to plan and build our trains.
- Iulioh 2y agoSadly we got our problems, mainly the fact that there isn't a unified ticketing system. But as long as you travel insode only one country it's great. In Italy trains work well and i heard that actually Trenitalia is so good that it's expanding to other countries Edit: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ferrovie_dello_Stato_Italiane https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ferrovie_dello_Stato_Italian... Seems that trenitalia actually controls A LOT of companies across Europe, super interesting.
- fragmede 2y ago> I am totally for trains, BTW, but I wish we'd hire EU and/or JP train builders to plan and build our trains. Why? They wouldn't end up being any cheaper or able to make the trains run on time.
- bobthepanda 2y agoWhen CA HSR was being proposed, there was some interest from SNCF of France and JR of Japan, but they specifically called out that the chosen route was very risky and hard to build. Now it's ballooned from $33B to $100B+.
- melenaboija 2y ago0,001% of all billionaires net worth.
- kman82 2y agoWhat’s the point of this?
- arcbyte 2y ago[flagged]
- renjimen 2y agoTakes one to know one? The point is to help folks understand how significant this fine is. Take from it what you will.
- mazugrin2 2y agoA lot of folks aren't great with numeracy, so I think it's good to use examples to help people understand how much tax Apple didn't have to pay that they themselves would have had to pay if they earned as much as Apple did.
- arcbyte 2y agoYes, explaining 13bn in terms of how many Children's Hospitals or Special Needs Assistants or Tablets per school child is very helpful in understanding how much money were taking about, and has no political agenda whatsoever. /sarcasm
- xupybd 2y agoI don't think this is correct. It's helping understand how large that much money is. It's a hard one to get your head around.
- dgfitz 2y ago> Hi, I made this page to contextualize 13 billion euros (or 14): an amount due to Ireland in an EU Apple tax case and all over the airwaves here this week. I use some pretty silly back-of-the-envelope type calculations It’s in the post. You asked a shitty question. Don’t be rude.
- rsynnott 2y agoA metro system or two: https://www.thejournal.ie/metrolink-expensive-rail-underground-6163625-Sep2023/ https://www.thejournal.ie/metrolink-expensive-rail-undergrou...
- lofaszvanitt 2y agoThe obsession with numbers and money, the sure sign of evil. Everyone, quick, drink holy wasser, until it's too late :D.
- michelangelo 2y agoI’d say more than €5.
- cornstalks 2y agoThe framing is kinda confusing in some questions. For example, "In € 2,000 one-off gifts? Answer: 1.3x € 2,000 gifts for each person." But clearly that can't be per person globally. I had to read the code to see it was specifically about Ireland. Actually, they're all about Ireland. I know the first question mentions Ireland but it's not obvious that all the questions are also scoped to Ireland.
- Aeolun 2y agoI felt like this was kind of obvious? If not that it was for Ireland, then at least that it was not for the entire world.
- incrudible 2y agoThis is a curious case of bait and switch. Ireland attracts Apple through low taxes. The EU rules this is an illegal subsidy for Apple by Ireland, harming other member states. So why should Ireland be entitled to the money, but not those member states?
- amiga386 2y agoIreland doesn't even want the 13 billion, because if it collects, it knows Apple will be looking for a new HQ and all the Apple jobs and payroll taxes and secondary economic activity will leave Ireland. Really, Ireland helped US companies evade tax, but the EU is just codifying this unfair advantage of Irish tax law as "state aid". The EU made Ireland close the "Double Irish" arrangement in 2015 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Double_Irish_arrangement https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Double_Irish_arrangement), this 13 billion is how much tax Apple avoided paying Ireland by using that structure, compared to having a normal company structure (sales in other EU member states -> revenue banked in Ireland) The EU didn't outlaw software/IP licensing! Until it does, Apple can still say that Apple Ireland licenses e.g. Final Cut Pro to Apple Germany for 298 EUR, and Apple Germany sells a German customer a copy for 299 EUR, banking 1 EUR revenue in Germany and 298 EUR revenue in Ireland. That's why other member states don't get the money.
- electriclove 2y agoWould Ireland consider leaving the EU?
- fullspectrumdev 2y agoNo. Support for remaining in the EU is incredibly high. In fact, these economic arrangements with MNC’s are rather unpopular - especially given native businesses don’t get the same tax breaks.
- Rinzler89 2y agoWhy would they consider that? If they do, Apple and all those companies would also leave since Ireland's EU membership is what kept them there. Withtout that their HQs there become worthless.
- brailsafe 2y agoUgh, the cost of that bike shed hurts. It's more money than my bike enthusiast father has ever had in net total assets (not accounting for pension, but yes accounting for house) + my entire net worth as an adult man in my thirties, and that's just a one for one number comparison without accounting for exchange. Hopefully it'll do it's job well and last forever, but it's just another reminder that whichever number I come up with to charge someone for services, it's not enough until it feels absurd, otherwise it'll get spent on some other totally asinine thing (not that a bike shelter is asinine, but the cost compared to the result does seem to be).
- daedrdev 2y agoThe fact that its only 25K homes is crazy
- dndn1 2y ago43,333 homes using 13Bn and 300k cost; I guess you changed one of these or did something else ?
- andrewstuart 2y agoIt's also the amount that Tim Cook keeps in cash in his wallet for paying small fines and such. Being less facetious - Apple has $166Billion in cash so 13 billion euro is a good enough chunk of it - 10%. https://www.investors.com/etfs-and-funds/sectors/sp500-companies-stockpile-1-trillion-cash-investors-want-it/ https://www.investors.com/etfs-and-funds/sectors/sp500-compa...
- styfle 2y ago13B euro is 14.31B usd, so that’s 8.62% (still a good chunk)
- bilekas 2y agoIt might aford a rail system connecting the major Dublin airport. I have my complaints about how Ireland spends it's money but all in all, it's less corrupt than other places I've lived in.
- ericyd 2y agoSince this seems to be a dual purpose post with the secondary goal of promoting calculang, I'll say I do not understand the value prop of calculang at all. It doesn't look like a library or language or anything, it just looks like plain javascript.
- dndn1 2y agoThanks for checking it out and for the comment! This surprised me, but you are right. The only thing I can point to referring to this example only is that there is a lot of Javascript in the page, but the calculations are (effectively Javascript also but:) described separately, and this is still useful I'll argue - Separation of concerns means we can easily first of all point to calculation logic, connect it to numbers where they are used, give some structure to it, build tools to generally interact with that structure (much simpler than with Javascript). calculang code is pure and has no side-effects (*supposed to), which means tools can safely re-run code and expect predictable output. I use a tool taking advantage of some of this in [1] a video exploring a calculang model for a raycasting algorithm in order to understand it and fix a thing. So, I said a lot of buzzwords but I do use these properties to experiment with different DX that is far more challenging to develop for Javascript or a programming language generally. The calculations in How much is 13 Bn euros are almost trivial - I normally don't put in these types of hardcodes for example - and it does happen to be valid Javascript here. An example to see some technical properties of calculang itself is this (also simple) one: https://new-layout-2--finding-calculang-foc.netlify.app/shop https://new-layout-2--finding-calculang-foc.netlify.app/shop There are a few tabs in the top left. The first (default) tab is showing calculang code: a few formulas and a few inputs (inputs are denoted by a convention). All are implemented like functions, and there are a lot of function calls - but those brackets have nothing in them. This is because calculang tracks how inputs are used and populates brackets for you - something I call input inference (or input threading). In the second tab you'll see the calculang output. So it looks like calculang helps you to write pure-functional calculation code in a concise way; by threading inputs through all the function calls automatically. calculang also supports modularity and effectively lets you re-use one calculation and "overriding" some component calculation/s. In other words: calculang formulas are flexible. And this is the real motivation for calculang taking care of all that input threading: flexibility means it should be done differently in different contexts (even sensible within the same model - for example - "I want this calc with this change, I want the same calc but with this other change or no change, and I want the difference between the two"). The compiler takes care of input threading through some pretty simple graph logic - everything related to compilation is <1k lines in total. Effective modularity, flexibility, and re-use of course is useful for maintainability. A recycling logo in the calculang.dev examples [2] indicates models which use modularity in some form. Sorry for the long post. That really is about all the technical details I can mention - but I think separation of concerns takes it very far also - in terms of its goals (that are stated on top of calculang.dev). [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hKVXRACCnqU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hKVXRACCnqU [2] https://calculang.dev/#examples https://calculang.dev/#examples
- weddpros 2y agoIt's barely enough to subsidise a war for one year...
- blastonico 2y agoIt's so big that you'll need a 64-bit variable to store that value.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- screye 2y ago13 billion euros = 2 miles of subway in SF downtown [1] [1] https://www.transit.dot.gov/sites/fta.dot.gov/files/2024-05/CA-San-Francisco-Downtown-Rail-Extension-Eng-Profile-2024-0412.pdf https://www.transit.dot.gov/sites/fta.dot.gov/files/2024-05/...
- wslh 2y agoWhat would the cost be for the same distance in other parts of the world? Even accounting for inefficiencies, do you have any data on that? A quick search seems to put SF at the top [1]. [1] https://pedestrianobservations.com/2020/09/13/the-costs-of-subways-and-els/ https://pedestrianobservations.com/2020/09/13/the-costs-of-s...
- postcynical 2y ago13bln$ gets you a 35 mile tunnel thru the swiss alps. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gotthard_Base_Tunnel https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gotthard_Base_Tunnel
- yywwbbn 2y agoI’d assume that drilling a tunnel under a mountain would be significantly cheaper than digging one in a densely inhabited city (in a seismically active area).
- postcynical 2y ago3miles for $2bln under densely inhabitated city. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weinberg_Tunnel https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weinberg_Tunnel
- piva00 2y agoIn Stockholm there's a current ongoing expansion of the metro system, the blue line is being expanded towards Nacka to the east and to Bakarby on the northwest while connecting to the south on an expansion. A new line (yellow) is under construction, the green line is being expanded. In total there are 18 new stations, digging under bodies of water (and quite deep through a lot of the blue line), total cost: around 5B€.
- happyopossum 2y ago€ 336k for a BIKE SHED? And it’s really just a nice semi-covered bike rack (not a shed as Americans would think of it)? Holy crap…
- Lionga 2y agoGovernment and corruption in action
- m3kw9 2y agoApple isn’t paying that
- petre 2y agoThen they're looking at frozen accounts and assets, just like Russia.
- b0g0n 2y agoTypeError: Cannot read properties of undefined (reading 'values') RuntimeError: Cannot read properties of undefined (reading 'values') Not working right for me
- dndn1 2y agoI use reactive Javascript which shows errors until a few pieces click together (best that I can understand it atm). So it's normal to have a string of errors and then everything works, but it should work in much less than 2s. I guess that can depend on a few things! Please let me know if waiting a bit still fails!
- a57721 2y agoNot a JS dev, but I think proper reactive JS shouldn't do that.
- dndn1 2y agoTo get my editor component and compiler interacting with that reactive system it got a little messy, and I'll review and hopefully fix it before I push this to a wider calculang playground. Hopefully it's my own bugs that I can fix anyways.
- fuzzythinker 2y agoThe fact that everything is scoped for Ireland needs to be more clear, by stating this very fact at the very top or as part of the title.
- tamimio 2y ago>it’s a lot of money You think that’s a lot of money? Pfft, war on Iraq did cost more than $3 trillion. https://www.hks.harvard.edu/publications/true-cost-iraq-war-3-trillion-and-beyond https://www.hks.harvard.edu/publications/true-cost-iraq-war-...
- black_13 2y ago[dead]
- jovial_cavalier 2y ago13,000 tomahawk missiles!
- stefantalpalaru 2y ago[dead]
- NackerHughes 2y agoWhy are all the variables functions? They're just numbers. There's no need at all for them to be functions that just return numbers.
- dndn1 2y agoIn this example it might not be so practical, but in calculang everything is a function including constants. This is because of an emphasis on flexibility. They're a constant here but in another calculang model I can call calculations from this same code while asking for specific pieces of the calculation to be different. e.g. if I have a population growth assumption then in an exercise I can get all these numbers allowing for population growth - without myself touching these formulas. Population then depends on time and must be a function. On calculang.dev I say that formulas (functions) are the building blocks of calculations, and they're the mechanism for flexibility (also transparency).
- black_13 2y agoFew of you attempt to contextualize the vast sum of 13 billion euros and others fixate on its magnitude without delving into the nuanced policy implications. This oversimplification, coupled with a lack of comprehensive understanding of EU dynamics and international tax law, leads to mischaracterizations of the situation as a "fine" rather than a ruling on back taxes. Also libertarian mindset manifests in various ways: skepticism towards government intervention and international governance, emphasis on corporate rights and freedom, and a tendency to reduce complex systems to simple narratives of overreach versus liberty. Notably absent from much of the discussion here are the wider ramifications for global tax policy, the delicate balance between attracting foreign investment and maintaining fair tax practices, and the potential impact on wealth inequality. The commentary also reveals a curious dynamic where Ireland, the supposed beneficiary, is reluctant to collect these taxes due to fears of losing foreign investment, a nuance lost on many commenters. Ultimately, while the discussion generates interesting points about the scale of corporate wealth and taxation, it often lacks the depth necessary to grapple with the complex legal, economic, and ethical issues at the heart of this case, highlighting the challenges of fostering informed public discourse on intricate matters of international finance and governance.
- bubblesnort 2y agoA screenful of JavaScript errors? I guess that means 13B EUR is does not compute much.
- langcss 2y agoWow. Bike shedding really is expensive.
- frank_bb 2y ago[dead]