> I'd also say there are worse freeriders of academic research in the economy than big tech

Are you talking about Elsevier, et al. How dare you?

> Public money indirectly comes from the most profitable companies

(In the U.S.) Corporations only account for 6% of federal tax revenue (https://taxfoundation.org/data/all/federal/us-tax-revenue-by...).

And probably the most profitable companies are the ones that are the best at skirting corporate tax law...

There's sales tax for customers, income (and payroll) tax for employees, and then taxes on dividends, and then capital gains on stocks. Low-margin SMEs contribute proportionately very little tax compared to Google when we account for tax contribution this way.

Employees payroll and income taxes come before margin?

I guess you're referring to my specification of low-margin. As I also specified SME, what that means is both low-margin and low-revenue. And the true intented meaning is that all cash flows one might want to tax (mostly with progressive rates) are small.

> And the true intented meaning is that all cash flows one might want to tax (mostly with progressive rates) are small.

rates become high fast enough for employees of sme to start paying substantial taxes, and payroll taxes don't have progressive rates, and ss is actually regressive tax.