An economist is at a baseball game when he sees a man outraged that a hotdog costs twelve dollars, and a beer costs 20. "I just wanted to have a fun day with my family, but tickets are suddenly 100 dollars! Now this?!"

What an idiot, the economist thinks. Can't he see the revenue he's generating?? The economist pays 64 dollars for two hotdogs and two beers, which he immediately drops on the ground, which makes him very happy.

It would be so immensely amusing if one of those companies got fined by the EU for something – with the fine calculated from their revenues. That should lead to some interesting fireworks.

if you remove the bullshit AI spending we've been in a recession for awhile

That's why measure of GDP is stupid. It counts every transaction. If you do your own lawn, cooked your own food, then you don't contribute to GDP. But if you hire someone else to do that, then you increase GDP.

Self sufficient communities are bad for the GDP. That's how they define "developed" country, because you have to pay everyone for everything

You're correct to think that. We're in a gigantic bubble and when it pops these assholes are going to make it all of our problem.

Tip to tip.

Oh, zero. Actually, negative because of all the government money theyre wasting and eating and profitting from (privately, anyways. All of these companies bleed millions daily)

Most countries tax companies on profit or dividends paid out, not revenue. Revenue-based taxation would defeat any industry that depends on another industry that depends on another industry.

Think about it this way: You want to build an electric car. You need to buy a battery pack. Now the company that builds your battery pack, they need refined lithium. The lithium refiner? Well, they need raw lithium.

Say mining the raw lithium costs 1000€ for a battery's worth. Now say all the companies involved make ZERO profit. Revenue tax is 10%.

Raw lithium mining company needs to charge 1100€ instead of 1000€ because of the tax. Now the lithium refiner needs to charge the battery manufacturer 1210€ because, again, the tax. And you now get to buy the battery for 1331€ because of the tax. Customer has to pay 1461€ for the battery in the car.

Meanwhile another company starts up. They mine raw lithium, process it, build the battery and then build the car. They only ever get paid once, so revenue tax is only on that 1000€. Customer pays 1100€ for the battery in the car.

This is also why companies get VAT back and only the final consumer really pays VAT. Otherwise every company would have to make everything from scratch to stay competitive, because every transaction gets taxed.

TL;DR: We only tax the actual profit. If you pass one dollar back and forth a billion times, you don't have to pay tax on a billion dollars in revenue, only if it ends up with the person who didn't have it originally does that person have to pay tax on that one dollar.

Yeah, Anthropic and OpenAI are around a trillion dollars in debt to all these companies, they are never going to be profitable, it is physically impossible for them to do that.

And all these companies have hitched their main business model on AI (for Microsoft it is around 70%), so they will get massively hit when the bubble bursts. They can't allow that, so they just keep pumping more money into them, making the bubble bigger and bigger.

None. It's a giant 69 hamster ferris wheel