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Pet peeve: company market cap cannot and should not be compared to GDP of a country. The best comparable is the "Gross Value Added" GVA = delta in EBITDA + employee compensation, as outlined here by Matt Klein in FT Alphaville:

https://ftalphaville.ft.com/2015/01/28/2103622/if-apple-were...

Others have recently estimated Apple GVA to be 0.5% of US GDP and 0.15% of world GDP.

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There are a ton of ways to slice these numbers, but no matter how you slice them the result is just insane as a percentage of America and the World - which was my point.

I appreciate you pointing out an alternate methodology though.

The magnitude matters a lot, though, and suggesting that Apple is more than 5% of the US GDP is incorrect and vastly overstates their contribution to the US economy.

The 1.2%/1.6% and even 0.5% figures quoted by others in this thread are still high numbers for a single company, but I submit that "more than 5%" would be a very different number (3x-20x, depending on which of the other numbers you believe) and is a gross exaggeration.

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