> A huge portion of people this country seem to believe that they don’t benefit from taxes and would prefer safety nets for other people not come out of their pockets.

Exactly, and they love it when people waste time and energy blaming businesses for not providing charity. This whole tweet storm should not be directed at Google, but directed at the US federal government.

> This also sounds like you think it’s easy, without considering the implications. (If govt resources is the solution, why do we still have a problem?)

Because it is purely political. Stalling progress on providing essentials for life helps keep people from getting help, and hence keeps taxes lower. If the US government can do identity verification for passports at USPS offices, it can do the same for other purposes.

>We don’t have municipal or federal Gmail or Facebook, and there are reasons to believe programs like that would take a long time and cost a lot of money.

If the world’s leading country cannot setup email infrastructure, then we have huge problems. Presumably, it already does for the how many million federal employees?