Skip to main content

Apple has more money than the US government

steve-jobs-holding-iphone-4-smile
Image used with permission by copyright holder

Here’s a frightening statistic: Apple Inc. now has more cash on hand than the entire United States federal government. As of Wednesday, July 27, the balance sheet for the US Treasury dipped down to $73.768 billion. That compares to the $76.156 billion Apple has in its deep coffers — a difference of $2.388 billion.

So, how in the name of all that’s good and fiscally responsible in this world did such a thing happen? A wide variety of individual factors are at play, here, of course. But it comes down to one basic fact: Apple makes more money than it spends, while the US government spends more than it generates in tax revenue. In other words, Apple is doing a really good job at running itself, while the federal government is not.

As you all surely know by now, Washington is stuck in a relentless gridlock over how to raise the national debt ceiling. If you haven’t yet grasped what the debt ceiling is, it works something like this: Imagine the entire US government pays its bills with a single credit card. Right now, that credit card is nearly maxed out. If the debt ceiling — the limit on our national credit card — isn’t raised by August 2, then the US won’t have enough incoming revenue to pay all of its bills.

The politicians disagree on how to go about fixing this problem, so they’ve let our cash coffers dwindle perilously low, which is basically how we got to the $73.768 billion number.

On the flip side, Apple is doing extraordinarily well. The iPhone maker brought in record profits in the third quarter of this year, about $5.5 billion, which has potentially set the Cupertino, California-based electronics giant on a path towards overtaking Exxon Mobile to become the largest corporation on the planet.

Unfortunately, we can’t ask Steve Jobs for a bailout — according to Fortune, the federal government blows through about $10 billion every day, so even Apple’s fat bank account would only last us about a week before we’d be back to square one.

Still, we can’t help but wish Jobs would consider a run for public office. He’s practically made for it — his entire political platform is right there in his last name.

Apple’s Q3 balance sheet snapshot:

apple-balance-sheet

US Treasury balance sheet:

us-treasury-balance-sheet

Topics
Andrew Couts
Former Digital Trends Contributor
Features Editor for Digital Trends, Andrew Couts covers a wide swath of consumer technology topics, with particular focus on…
The 5 best websites like Craigslist in 2024

For years, Craigslist has been the go-to website for scoring a free sofa or finding an apartment. But there are plenty of other alternatives to Craigslist that do an equally fine job, oftentimes with a more attractive interface and fewer spam postings. The 5 best Craigslist alternatives are:

Facebook Marketplace
OfferUp
Locanto
Mercari
Recycler

Read more
How to stop spam emails in Outlook, Gmail, and more
A person sitting on the grass and taking notes at a laptop.

Spam and other unwanted emails are a nuisance, and it can seem like keeping them away from your inbox is a losing battle. But while you won't be able to prevent every piece of spam from landing in your inbox, it is possible to significantly reduce the number of messages that show up.

In this guide, we'll show you how to use filters, blocking, and spam reporting features to help stop spam from invading your inbox. We'll also go over a few more tips on how to reduce unwanted messages overall.
How to stop spam in Gmail
If you use Gmail, the most popular email client, you will eventually start getting spam. Here are our two favorite ways to deal with it.
Block spam in Gmail

Read more
How to add a signature in Gmail on desktop and mobile
how to file for stimulus

Email signatures are a great way to automatically include your contact information to your email correspondence. If you'd like to add a signature to your emails in Gmail, it's easy enough to add one. You'll just need to go through your Gmail settings to do it.

In this guide, we'll show you how to add a signature in Gmail whether you're using the desktop website version of Gmail or its mobile app.
How to add a signature on your desktop
Step 1: Launch your favorite browser and log into your Gmail account as you normally would.

Read more