Intel to Receive $8.5B in Grants to Build Chip Plants

Market investment is ultimately determined by plausible narrative, and by the national narratives at the broadest level.

That is, if your industry is tuned in to the investment climate, the things being pursued match the things that people are saying "will make the country great", and are backed up by legislation and financing deals.

In the previous era, the US was focused on a deindustrializing narrative: the things that made America great were "clean, high-tech" industry, high graduation rates and four-year degrees, and an outsourced empire that brought sprawling supply chains together "just in time".

The new model has brought back the industry, so it needs an emphasis on concrete job skills, versus academic credentialing. It's in-sourced so the supply chain has started in on a radical shift. It emphasizes new energy sources with few foreign dependencies, moving the geopolitical stance towards isolation. The approach to the national balance sheet also has to change, but precisely how lacks for consensus.

Like with the previous shifts there were some reasons to take the narrative in a certain direction: late 60's America had many environmental concerns, and fell into an energy crunch in the next decade. "Smart bombing" the Middle East to secure oil supplies brought together the national industries towards a common goal, and the money supply got a reset early on with the end of Bretton-Woods, that helped propel the Boomer generation towards homes-and-families participation within the system.

Today we're still putting together the pieces of that narrative, but it's central to the political climate: the old two-party system is focused on exhausted narratives that don't actually excite ordinary people to vote. Therefore the candidates are rushing to put together platforms that rewrite the script and mobilize new demographics.

Semiconductor manufacturing is very capital intensive so running the company as a nonprofit is a nonstarter.

You've presented historical data to counter the of argument that wage/salary growth MAY lead to potential unprofitability solely on the basis of one year's profit numbers. That's literally driving forward looking in the rearview mirror because it says very little about how profitable the company would be if it raised wages/salaries. At best it may be a first order approximation of how profitable the company would have been in 2022, if it paid people more then. However, even for 2022 the calculation isn't as simple as dividing the profit by the number of employees and keeping the company profitable.

Or lose your pizza making wages to wafer makers applying their wafer making skills to pizza making.

Unfortunately a lot of that influence was done with the exact purpose of handing the markets to the US companies. I am not anti market and there are definitely good arguments in its favor (e.g. a better cheaper product even if imported will allow you to invest the money in something else) but it's a delicate topic and in reality almost no country operates like this.

Also even free market proponents draw the line somewhere. They will always advocate privatising healthcare but never the police or the army. Somehow it's important that keeping people healthy is economical and efficient, but not upholding the law.

> The prospect of regional wars or worse makes you feel safe ?

Membership in NATO prevents regional wars, because it increases the risk for Russia. Standing alone, a country like Finland or Poland can respond only with conventional weapons, which they don't have too many considering the scale of Russian war against Ukraine. By attacking a NATO member, Russia risks with a nuclear response from other alliance members up to a global nuclear war.

Russians understand and react to power, and NATO represents that. When a Russian fighter jet intruded Turkish airspace while flying sorties in support of Assad's regime in Syria and got shot down by Turkish air defense, Russian officials came to apologize instead of ramping up the usual "we'll nuke everything!" rhetoric. Demonstrate credible force and they'll backtrack.

> Do you think that if Ukraine was not being courted by US that it would've been invaded like that ?

The premise of your question is upside down. Ukraine was courting the US to get security guarantees such as NATO membership, not vice versa. The notion that Eastern Europe had to be somehow tricked into EU and NATO is deeply misguided. Instead, these have been the main foreign policy goals for most countries in the region, the holy grail.

The alternative for Ukraine was to become an oppressive dictatorship like Belarus has become under Russian influence. That would've meant that Russia would've moved in their armed forces, installed nuclear weapons and prepared to use Ukraine as a staging ground for further invasions westwards - everything they've done in Belarus so far.

Instead of seeing Kyiv under missile attacks, we'd be seeing the same happening 1000 km westwards in Warsaw. How far towards Paris and London do you prefer to let this thing creep before tackling the problem? Until Picadilly Circus?