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A comment on Walmart in Early-Stage Acquisition Talks with Humana. Parent comment

Re:Walmart in Early-Stage Acquisition Talks with Humana by arkis22 on Thursday March 29, 2018 @08:52PM (#16712697)
I think you're correct. It does place that fiscal incentive. But can you honestly look at the last 20/30 years and say that private companies haven't tried to make the government as ineffective as possible?

Lobbying is huge. There are innumerable ways for incumbents to secure rents. Healthcare companies keep cashing blank checks from the government. Amazon also basically eliminated a huge chunk of tax revenue by turning retail into a profitless endeavor.

The solution is to make our government respected, effective, and intelligent. That's hard.

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Re:Walmart in Early-Stage Acquisition Talks with Humana by siruncledrew on Friday March 30, 2018 @01:04AM (#16713810)
The solution seems like it should just be a given, yet at the same time is really asking a lot of America.

It's pretty crazy that the combined market cap of 5 companies: Walmart, Amazon, Google, Microsoft, and Apple [0] are essentially equal to the entire GDP of Africa [1].

[0] https://www.marketwatch.com/story/amazons-market-cap-falls-b...

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_Africa

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Re:Walmart in Early-Stage Acquisition Talks with Humana by smnrchrds on Friday March 30, 2018 @01:36AM (#16713920)
It's a meaningless comparison. GDP is annual. Market cap is supposed to represent all future income in perpetuity at a discount. It's like comparing the annual income of person A to the net worth of person B.
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