I’m pretty sure that’s socialism
Unless it comes from the Commie region of Asia, it's just sparkling state capitalism.
U.S. government takes 10% stake in Intel
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Re: U.S. government takes 10% stake in Intel
#152Re: U.S. government takes 10% stake in Intel
#153Earlier quoted context omitted.
Socialism would be worker ownership. This is simply state ownership of what's seen as a strategic business. It's an abandonment of market dogmatism, but not a step towards any of the many ideologies or positions where markets have a smaller role.
I think the phrase i heard before is State Capitalism. But i could be wrong
Yes. State capitalism is definitely the word.
Usually I suppose, when I think state capitalism I would think something like the Soviet Union, where this happens across many businesses with the state owning everything, but I suppose it is state capitalism, or a state capitalist element in a market system. One might even call it a mixed economy, or a sort of hacked-apart Swedish model without labour unions and state ownership of only certain strategic industries, rather than let's say, state ownership of hospitals.
Re: U.S. government takes 10% stake in Intel
#154[flagged]
Re: U.S. government takes 10% stake in Intel
#155> the government made an $8.9 billion investment in Intel common stock, purchasing 433.3 million shares at a price of $20.47 per share, giving it a 10% stake in the company > The United States paid nothing for these Shares, and the Shares are now valued at approximately $11 Billion Dollars I don't understand. Can somebody explain to me how the government made an investement, bought shares, but paid nothing?
The answer is in the paragraph in between the two you quoted from. The money for the purchase has already been appropriated by Congress and awarded to Intel. The awards didn't previously have this giant string attached where Intel gives stock in return. But now they do. And it makes sense that Intel is spinning it as a generous investment from the gov't, but the gov't is spinning it as a free gift from Intel. Neither…
Isn't that pretty bad, Darth Vader style changing of previously agreed on deals ?
Not sure how anyone can believe anything that was agreed will hold in such an environment. :P
Re: U.S. government takes 10% stake in Intel
#156So, this happened just because one man (you know the one) decided it should happen? No vote or anything?
Re: U.S. government takes 10% stake in Intel
#157Earlier quoted context omitted.
If you’re going to give taxpayer money to a for-profit company, taxpayers should receive a share of the company in return. I generally don’t like 90% of the policies we’ve got going on right now, but I actually feel okay about this one.
This is ignoring the original agreement of profit-sharing with the government as was in Biden’s original plan. Feeling “okay” or not “okay” is irrelevant until we know how well Intel does in the next decade and calculate the cost against the profit sharing agreement.
Yeah, I haven’t dug into the numbers to know. Which option makes more money for the government (and therefore the taxpayer, sort of) - a profit sharing agreement, or a share of the company (which, as with all publicly traded companies, is a profit sharing agreement that sometimes happens through dividends, and sometimes happens through stock sales).
Re: U.S. government takes 10% stake in Intel
#158Earlier quoted context omitted.
Arguably the alternative was the government just... not giving them the CHIPS Act money. (And there's certainly a point to be made that Trump altering the deal is... problematic.) But I will say, I find the concept that when we invest public dollars in a private company, the public retains a stake appealing. I think about the strategic oil reserve, and how the government actually can make money by buying and selling…
We haven't invested any public dollars into Intel, we just took 10% of it.
The US government is paying about $9B to Intel for this (on top of the $2B already paid).
Re: U.S. government takes 10% stake in Intel
#159Earlier quoted context omitted.
There is only 1 winner and 1 loser: Intel. It's the only chip manufacturer "left" in the US. The argument is national security: the US expects China to invade Taiwan and this will kill TSMC in the process. Whether this will happen or not can be debated, but this is what the government expects.
> It's the only chip manufacturer "left" in the US Global Foundries, Micron, and Texas Instruments all come to mind
GF hasn't gone past the 12nm node. TI is at 45nm. Micron is on relatively recent processes, but they make RAM, not logic (which are totally different processes). Intel is the only chip manufacturer left that is working in logic at anything like the leading edge.
Re: U.S. government takes 10% stake in Intel
#160Forgive me...how is this different than taxes? And wouldn't it be better to oh, I don't know, enforce the standard corporate tax rate?
It's not like taxes because they are just making up the rules as they go along.