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Senate passes bipartisan bill to subsidize U.S.-made semiconductor chips

washingtonpost.com

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Re: Senate passes bipartisan bill to subsidize U.S.-made semiconductor chips

#451

Post by twawaaay »

sofixa wrote: post #440
twawaaay wrote: post #345

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is flawed logic. Security is what allows everything else to exist. You can't just say "Let's liquidate military and spend all that money on children". This would last only shortly until China or somebody else invades US. Now, I am not saying to not pay for meals. Investing directly in children is probably one of the better ways to improve future outlook of a country. I am just saying your logic is flawed and the…

> This would last only shortly until China or somebody else invades US. Let's be realistic. Nobody can invade the US. Two oceans, vast territory, sparse population make that impossible from the get go. Not to mention the fact that what, 1/3 of the US population is armed to the death dreaming of the day they could make use of their arsenals. The sheer amount of troops required to keep the land and population under con…

Not sure you understand this internet thing works.

US is investing into microchip industry so that they don't get invaded over the internet.

As to boots in the ground, you are just naive. The only thing that stops China or Russia from invading US is US military potential. The money that goes into military buys you peace.

Re: Senate passes bipartisan bill to subsidize U.S.-made semiconductor chips

#452

Post by samstave »

kube-system wrote: post #167
samstave wrote: post #65

When will senate pass a technological test. Lets make these blokes take a MINIMAL entry level exam; * What is a data base * What is personal identifiable identification and why does it mattter * What does a walled garden mean So many functionally identifiable comms These fucking morons cant even state the above. De-Seat them all.

People in leadership positions don't necessarily need to be domain experts to be good leaders. The problem with Congress is money, not a lack of domain expertise. A leader with the right incentives, without domain expertise, knows how to ask questions to the right people. Your congressperson doesn't know what a database is because they don't care, not because they're dumb.

im not saying they are dumb, im saying they are obsolete

Re: Senate passes bipartisan bill to subsidize U.S.-made semiconductor chips

#453

Post by sofixa »

twawaaay wrote: post #451
sofixa wrote: post #440

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This would last only shortly until China or somebody else invades US. Let's be realistic. Nobody can invade the US. Two oceans, vast territory, sparse population make that impossible from the get go. Not to mention the fact that what, 1/3 of the US population is armed to the death dreaming of the day they could make use of their arsenals. The sheer amount of troops required to keep the land and population under con…

Not sure you understand this internet thing works. US is investing into microchip industry so that they don't get invaded over the internet. As to boots in the ground, you are just naive. The only thing that stops China or Russia from invading US is US military potential. The money that goes into military buys you peace.

> As to boots in the ground, you are just naive. The only thing that stops China or Russia from invading US is US military potential. The money that goes into military buys you peace.

No, i am not naïve, you just have no idea how militaries, amphibious assaults and logistics work. How many hundreds of thousands, or millions of soldiers are required to conquer the US? How do you supply them? For reference, the invasion of Sicily had 160 thousand, and had the advantage of being against an enemy with no will to fight and within less than a hundred kilometres from a friendly shore for supplies. And then you have a population, which again, is highly armed.

The US spent more than half of its existence with practically no armed forces. Yes, warfare has drastically changed and various amphibious assault and supply ships now exist, but there are still none in anything close to the quantity required to supply multiple hundreds of thousands of soldiers and their equipment across an ocean, and there's also a much heavier need for logistics.

The US can cut the entirety of its army and air force tomorrow and just keep the navy and marines, and it's still invincible from invasion and will remain so.

It's like the misconception that the US armed forces somehow have anything to do with freedom ("protecting"), of American citizens or otherwise. It's just stupid American propaganda that doesn't make sense if you think about it for a bit.

Re: Senate passes bipartisan bill to subsidize U.S.-made semiconductor chips

#454

Post by cudgy »

pclmulqdq wrote: post #274
phkahler wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> We absolutely need to fund more semiconductor manufacturing. Losing that ability to China/Taiwan was just a terrible strategic mistake. The correct solution to that is tariffs. That would hurt us short term and should have been done long ago before it would have been a problem. This will add to the debt pile, so it will be with us for a long time.

The debt pile won't notice an extra $50 billion. To make a meaningful dent in it, spending on entitlements needs to get cut or taxes on the middle class need to dramatically increase. Neither of those things are going to happen.

Yes. Entitlements like this one are what needs to be eliminated. Sweet handouts to corporations so they can pump up their stock price by buying back shares is basically what this will accomplish.

I wonder how many tech companies are about to pivot to chips in order to take advantage of some of this free money from taxpayers.

Re: Senate passes bipartisan bill to subsidize U.S.-made semiconductor chips

#455

Post by cudgy »

tablespoon wrote: post #247
Someone1234 wrote: post #129

It should be noted that the US decided not to extend the universal free school meals program, because it was "too expensive" at $11B. They also stopped the expanded and early payment of family tax credits, causing a double-whammy hit to poor families (then pile on inflation/food prices, and gas prices). But $50B to large monopolistic companies isn't "too expensive," and we can afford that . Unfortunately 52 senators…

> It should be noted that the US decided not to extend the universal free school meals program, because it was "too expensive" at $11B. They also stopped the expanded and early payment of family tax credits, causing a double-whammy hit to poor families (then pile on inflation/food prices, and gas prices). But $50B to large monopolistic companies isn't "too expensive," and we can afford that. That's misleading framing…

> there's more consensus around national security spending than social spending.

Consensus among whom? Congress?

Poll after poll demonstrates that people care more about economic issues that affect them directly than spending more on military when the US already spends ridiculous amounts over their nearest competitors.

Re: Senate passes bipartisan bill to subsidize U.S.-made semiconductor chips

#456

Post by simonh »

WebbWeaver wrote: post #37
pm90 wrote: post #20

WaPo article, which has more details about the bill and less details about what different “personalities” are saying: https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/07/27/senate-ch... . Overall, it looks great. We absolutely need to fund more semiconductor manufacturing. Losing that ability to China/Taiwan was just a terrible strategic mistake. The US hasn’t lost this battle (over semiconductors) just yet. While curren…

Can we not frame this as a battle or even a war? The US lost this capability a long time ago due to labor costs and natural resource consumption. From the labor cost and natural resource consumption a operation of this size can easily fail. We need more partners in this not just a handout. This action should have little to no input on any globalized leverage system. For this to be successful we need more partners

"Lost this capability"?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_semiconductor_fabricat...

90 plants in the US, of which 5 have been built or under construction within the last 5 years. That's the same number of new fabs as Taiwan, China and Japan.

It is true that Taiwan has the technical lead at the moment, but that's a very recent development, yet everyone's talking as though the US hasn't built a chip since the 90s. Most of the strategically most important chips for military and industrial applications aren't at the cutting edge anyway.

It's an important strategic sector, sure, but none of these subsidies will actually address the most advanced tech segment and most of it will disappear as political pork. I mean it's your money, I'm a Brit, but to me this all just seems like absurd posturing.

Re: Senate passes bipartisan bill to subsidize U.S.-made semiconductor chips

#457

Post by cudgy »

Instead of subsidizing the semiconductor industry (and others) with free subsidies, why not invest the money in the companies and issue shares to every registered tax payer equally. At least then the citizens might see some benefits from yet another huge act of corporate welfare.

Re: Senate passes bipartisan bill to subsidize U.S.-made semiconductor chips

#458

Post by cudgy »

sct202 wrote: post #187
C-x_C-f wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is always framed in terms of USA vs. China/Taiwan but what about Europe? AFAIK (I might know wrong) the consensus among macroeconomists is that "social market economies" like European ones are better suited (compared to "liberal market economies" like the USA) to investing in large scale manufacturing (see e.g. Varieties of Capitalism [0]—though it is a bit controversial). Though I do wonder if chip manufacturin…

The EU passed their own Chips Act earlier this year. It was a point of contention since Intel's CEO has kept threatening to expand in Europe instead of the US if the US CHIPS act isn't passed.

Otherwise known as extortion.

Re: Senate passes bipartisan bill to subsidize U.S.-made semiconductor chips

#459

Post by outsidetheparty »

jobgh wrote: post #331
InvisibleCities wrote: post #269

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This has nothing do with people’s civic engagement levels, and everything to do with money. The semiconductor industry gets a massive subsidy because they spend tens of millions of dollars on lobbying - impoverished schoolchildren get left to starve because they don’t.

You honestly think tens of millions in lobbying efforts cause a tens of billions return on investment? Why is it so insanely cheap? Maybe our elected representatives simply agree that national security is a priority just like the people who voted them into office?

I mean… yes? I thought this was common knowledge; there’s certainly no shortage of documentation available: the ROI from lobbying efforts is insanely high, on the order of 75,000% by many estimates.

I find it amusing that you dismissed this in a sibling comment as “just comparing spending to returns”… that’s literally what lobbying is: spending money to secure political favor. If our elected representatives simply agree that something should be a priority, companies wouldn’t need to bribe them to do it.

(Not so clear, personally, how you justify transposing this semiconductor handout to the more superficially defensible “national security”; but see also fossil fuel subsidies, corporate tax breaks, barring negotiated drug pricing: https://visual.ly/community/Infographics/politics/amazing-ro... )

As for “why is it so cheap”? I always assumed it was at least in part because there are a limited number of politicians competing with each other for the same funding sources.

It’s very low effort for a corporation to threaten to offshore and ask for a handout to not follow through on the threat. And it’s a very easy call for the politician to take the bribe, because then they can go back their constituency and say “We saved your jobs from going to China!” Everybody wins except the taxpayers. (And the corporations will go ahead and offshore, or not, just like they would have anyway, because one of the services they pay their lobbyists for is ensuring there will be no consequences for accepting the handout.)

Re: Senate passes bipartisan bill to subsidize U.S.-made semiconductor chips

#460

Post by andreime »

cudgy wrote: post #457

Instead of subsidizing the semiconductor industry (and others) with free subsidies, why not invest the money in the companies and issue shares to every registered tax payer equally. At least then the citizens might see some benefits from yet another huge act of corporate welfare.

cause as individual investors you can't force the company to build fabs. company will make money for investors in other ways.
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