That's the funny thing: all these tech companies are basically bleeding the rest of the world dry (Facebook is basically killing local newspapers across the world) and then they're hoarding money.
But it's disingenuous to pretend there aren't any benefits for the US as the hundreds of thousands if not millions of people working in tech companies in the US for very high salaries can attest. Very high salaries both for the US and definitely for the rest of the world.
According to various sources the number of software developers in the US is around 3.3 million (https://dqydj.com/number-of-developers-in-america-and-per-st...). Even by a pessimistic estimate, let's say that 25% of these have very high salaries compared to the average or median wage in the US. Either because their seniority or because they work for big companies.
So that would mean something like 0.8 million.
Now, on top of that, add associated engineers working for tech companies, add middle managers (which are generally paid more than individual contributors), etc., and it's easily 1 million highly paid individuals.
Just think about it: Amazon, Microsoft, Google, Apple, Facebook, Cisco, Netflix, Oracle, IBM, Adobe, Uber, HP, Verizon, AT&T, Intuit, ServiceNow, VMWare, Salesforce, Workday, Dell, Intel, Qualcomm, Ebay, Paypal, Activision, and probably another 1000 companies with at least 1000 employees in the US, that I don't know. Plus non-tech companies that have huge tech departments, such as Walmart, and that pay salaries that are competitive with the ones paid by purely tech companies.
On top of that, American software devs have no idea how good they have it. In Europe getting 100k as a fresh grad is impossible even in Switzerland (Switzerland having much higher salaries than the rest of Europe), unless you work for... a US giant (FAANG). And those spots are a minuscule part of the tech world in Europe. And now imagine that Europe is better off than 95% of the rest of the world.
The idea of a regular Joe Developer having a decent shot of having made (made, not saved!) a million by the time they're 35 is frankly ludicrous for most of the rest of the world.
You’re asking me? Who bloody knows? They still have to file, contribute to Social Security (the employer and employee side) and pay whatever income tax they owe. For some, it isn’t their only job, and for others, they make their own choices about how many hours it is worth driving.
They’re neither slaves nor indentured servants nor necessarily any worse off or better off than your average Café worker. They make the choices they make in exchange for a paycheck, no different than you and I in that regard. The income they receive goes somewhere, and some of that goes to the government in the form of taxes, no different than your or I. Feel free to dig into the numbers yourself to figure out how much, but figure in that some of that is likely going into the car, which means auto shops and car dealers, some of that is going to coffee or tea, some of that is going to their rent, and some of that is going to the food they eat. All of which is eventually ending up in someone else’s paycheck as taxable income for which some will file a W2 and others will file a 1040 whether that’s tomorrow or 20 years from now.
While I wish this were true, Uber is yet another tax dodging corporation like so many others: https://fortune.com/2015/10/22/uber-tax-shell/