Bernie Sanders Wants a U.S. Sovereign Wealth Fund for AI
forbes.com> Senator Bernie Sanders introduced the American A.I. Sovereign Wealth Fund Act, proposing a one-time 50% stock tax on large AI companies. This would create a $7 trillion public fund, managed by an independent commission, distributing 5% of its value annually to Americans.
That makes no sense. Where will the cash come from to distribute to Americans? Assuming that for all tax / regulatory purposes you now classify Google as an AI company (which I think is a huge stretch), they are the only "large AI company" will distribute a dividend, and FWIW, their dividend yield is only 0.24%.
Anthropic and OpenAI, which I assume are the only other two "large AI companies" will not pay dividends. They will have to reinvest for a very very long time before they pay out dividends, if ever. Alphabet only started paying dividends in 2024.
The next step would be forcing them to pay out FCF as dividends. When that doesn't work Bernie will come up with an even worse idea.