I'd give the money to folks starting in the trades before bailling out the college-educated class.
Also, wiping out numbers on a spreadsheet doesn't erect new homes. If we wiped out student debt, the portion of that value that went into new homeownership would principally flow to existing homeowners.
Finally, you're comparing a government hand-out to private investment into a capital asset. That's like comparing eating out at a nice restaurant to buying a bond. Different prerogatives.
Problem is, the parent comment is right. Even if you think student loan mitigation has washy economics behind it, the outcome is predictable and even desirable if you're playing the long-game in politics. If not that, spend $500,000,000,000 towards onshoring Apple and Microsoft's manufacturing jobs. Spend it re-invigorating America's mothballed motor industry and let Elon spec it out like a kid in a candy shop. Relative to AI, even student loan forgiveness and dumping money into trades looks attractive (not that Trump would consider either).
Nobody on HN should be confused by this. We know Sam Altman is a scammer (Worldcoin, anyone?) and we know OpenAI is a terrible business. This money is being deliberately wasted to keep OpenAI's lights on and preserve the Weekend At Bernie's-esque corpse that is America's "lead" in software technology. That's it. It's blatantly simple.
One, you’re not getting MGX and SoftBank to pay off student debt.
Two, if they do what they say they want to, they’ll be building new power generation, transmission infrastructures and data centres. Even if AI is a hype, that’s far from useless capital.
> money is being deliberately wasted to keep OpenAI's lights on
OpenAI is spending their own money on this.
A) this is a pledge by companies they may or may not even have the cash required to back it up. Certainly they aren’t spending it all at once, but to be completely honest it’s nothing more than a PR stunt right now that seems to be an exercise in courting favor
B) that so called private capital is going to get incentives from subsidies, like tax breaks, grants etc. It’s inevitable if this proceeds to an actual investment stage. What’s that about it being pure private capital again?
C) do to the aforementioned circumstances in A it seems whatever government support systems are stood up to support this - and if this isn’t ending in hot air, there will be - it still means it’s not pure private capital and worse yet, they’ll likely end up bilking tax payers and the initiative falls apart with companies spending far less then the pledge but keeping all the upside.
I’ll bet a years salary it plays out like this.
If this ends up being 100% private capital with no government subsidies of any kind, I’ll be shocked and elated. Look at anything like this in the last 40 years and you’ll find scant few examples that actually hold up under scrutiny that they didn’t play out this way.
Which brings me to my second part. So we are going to - in some form - end up handing out subsidies to these companies, either at the local state or federal level, but by the logic of not paying off student debt, why are we going to do this? It’s only propping up an unhealthy economic policy no?
Why is it so bad for us to cancel student debt but it’s fine to have the same cost equivalent as subsidies for businesses? Is it under the “creates jobs” smoke screen? Despite the fact the overwhelming majority of money made will not go to the workers but back to the wealthy and ultra wealthy.
There's no sense of equity here. If the government is truly unequivocally hands off - no subsidies, no incentives etc - than fine, the profits go where they go, and thats the end of it.
However, it won't be, and that opens up a perfectly legitimate ask about how this money is going to get used and who it benefits
I don't think that was the actual literal expectation, rather that the cost to the tax payer - and there will be a cost to the tax payer - should be best spent elsewhere.
>Two, if they do what they say they want to, they’ll be building new power generation, transmission infrastructures and data centres. Even if AI is a hype, that’s far from useless capital.
Nothing has proven this to be true yet
>OpenAI is spending their own money on this.
Not a single entity has spent any real money on this. So far, its a PR stunt. The general lack of roll out corresponding with the announcement is telling. When real money is spent than I'll believe they might go through with it all the way.
Whats more likely to happen is that these companies will spend at most a token amount of money, then lobby congress and the executive branch for subsidies in order to proceed more 'earnestly' and since this is a pledge, there's nothing in writing that binds a contractual commitment of these funds and their purpose, so they could just as well pocket what they can to offset the costs, use what infrastructure gets built as a result, but shut down the initiative. Bad press won't matter, if its reported on at all.
This has played out for decades like this. Big announcements, so called private money commitments, then come the asks from the government to offset the costs they supposedly pledged to pay anyway, and eventually if you're lucky 1 widget gets built in some economic development area and the companies pocket what they can manage to bilk before its all shut down.
I'd rather fix the law then try to decide who to hand out tax surpluses to.
We’re well into the pendulum swinging back. The vanguard were the dropout wunderkids. Now it’s salt-of-the-earth tradesmen and the like.
OpenAI is the Jeb Bush of D.C. They’re spending a lot of money, but it ain’t going far. Last time Altman asked for regulation he had to “jk” backwards when Europe and California proposed actual rules.
Compared with who exactly? Certainly not EMEA. Korea is mainly hardware and China has run out of IP to copy.