4 ms·

They talk about subsidies, "draining its coffers", and "taxpayers helping some of the richest corporations on the planet buy servers, equipment, and power infra

by pingou 4mo ago

They talk about subsidies, "draining its coffers", and "taxpayers helping some of the richest corporations on the planet buy servers, equipment, and power infrastructure", but it doesn't seem like they have lost any money, just that the tax breaks mean that they haven't earned as much as they could. Not that I think that those datacenters should have those tax breaks, but the language seems quite misleading if not an outright lie, presumably without those the datacenters would have been built elsewhere.

autoexec 4mo ago
> presumably without those the datacenters would have been built elsewhere. presumably without the tax breaks someone else could have bought those products, used the land/resources while paying for their fair share. Billions that should have gone to support tax payers aren't there now so I think "taxpayers helping some of the richest corporations on the planet buy servers, equipment, and power infrastructure" seems fair.
favflam 4mo ago
it is a case of socialize the losses, privatize the gains. regarding tax payers, the biggest sins of new data centers seem to be: * driving power bills parabolic due to no mandated investment in power generation or delivery grid * consuming water from the city system far beyond normal usage; water bills go up for normal people * pollution; xAI in memphis illegally uses gas turbines with no pollution controls; air is very dirty around their data center; data centers apparently are noisy in places legislation is needed to force costs currently being borne by normal people back on to the data centers reaping all of the profit.
hashmap 4mo ago
large corporations moving doing things like datacenters drain significant resources, and resources cost money, which you then lose.
netsharc 4mo ago
John Oliver on tax breaks: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8bl19RoR7lc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8bl19RoR7lc

by pingou 4mo ago

autoexec 4mo ago

> presumably without those the datacenters would have been built elsewhere. presumably without the tax breaks someone else could have bought those products, used the land/resources while paying for their fair share. Billions that should have gone to support tax payers aren't there now so I think "taxpayers helping some of the richest corporations on the planet buy servers, equipment, and power infrastructure" seems fair.

favflam 4mo ago

it is a case of socialize the losses, privatize the gains. regarding tax payers, the biggest sins of new data centers seem to be: * driving power bills parabolic due to no mandated investment in power generation or delivery grid * consuming water from the city system far beyond normal usage; water bills go up for normal people * pollution; xAI in memphis illegally uses gas turbines with no pollution controls; air is very dirty around their data center; data centers apparently are noisy in places legislation is needed to force costs currently being borne by normal people back on to the data centers reaping all of the profit.

hashmap 4mo ago

large corporations moving doing things like datacenters drain significant resources, and resources cost money, which you then lose.

netsharc 4mo ago

John Oliver on tax breaks: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8bl19RoR7lc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8bl19RoR7lc