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Tech giants join call for funding U.S. chip production

reuters.com

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Re: Tech giants join call for funding U.S. chip production

#21

Post by lumost »

amelius wrote: post #16
diegocg wrote: post #8

> Some of the world’s biggest chip buyers, including Apple Inc, Microsoft Corp and Alphabet Inc’s Google, are joining top chip-makers such as Intel Corp > to create a new lobbying group to press for government chip manufacturing subsidies None of those companies need subsidies.

I'm ok with subsidies if they open up their designs. Commoditize your complement. To some approximation and with few exceptions, hardware is everybody's complement.

why? even if they open the designs the CapEx requirements for modern chip making leaves it in the realm of megacaps and governments.

Re: Tech giants join call for funding U.S. chip production

#22

Post by pjc50 »

tenebrisalietum wrote: post #18
cde-v wrote: post #12

How ballsy for a bunch of corps that barely pay taxes to ask for government subsidies.

Everyone who works there should be already paying income taxes. Why the double taxation?

How much tax did Bezos pay on his fortune? Not income tax but capital gains, and probably not as much as you'd expect.

Re: Tech giants join call for funding U.S. chip production

#23

Post by etcet »

tenebrisalietum wrote: post #18
cde-v wrote: post #12

How ballsy for a bunch of corps that barely pay taxes to ask for government subsidies.

Everyone who works there should be already paying income taxes. Why the double taxation?

Do corporations pay tax on their payroll? I'm not understanding what's being doubly taxed here.

Re: Tech giants join call for funding U.S. chip production

#24

Post by pjc50 »

vmception wrote: post #15
cde-v wrote: post #12

How ballsy for a bunch of corps that barely pay taxes to ask for government subsidies.

I mean you only need to get one agency head, or one head of state / cabinet member, or the majority of congress who votes in unison right now to agree, once

Pay them a small chunk of that billions in campaign contributions, and it's easy.

Re: Tech giants join call for funding U.S. chip production

#25

Post by lkbm »

diegocg wrote: post #8

> Some of the world’s biggest chip buyers, including Apple Inc, Microsoft Corp and Alphabet Inc’s Google, are joining top chip-makers such as Intel Corp > to create a new lobbying group to press for government chip manufacturing subsidies None of those companies need subsidies.

In terms of fairness to these companies, yeah. They're rich and it sucks to give them our tax dollars.

But in terms of maintaining the competitiveness and security of the US, seems like they do.

As a rule, I don't care if giving someone money is fair. I care about whether it causes a general increase in the welfare of our society.

Even as a non-recipient of these subsidies, I might be better off if they existed if they reduce risk to the supply chain I'm downstream of as a consumer. If it's unfair to me but makes me better off, I'm not going to cry over the unfairness.

(Maybe tariffs on imported chips are a better solution, but I suspect that's more politically fraught, and solutions that work are better than solutions that don't.)

Re: Tech giants join call for funding U.S. chip production

#27

Post by aksss »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #3
xeromal wrote: post #2

This was kind of expected due to the shutdowns required by most countries during the chaos of COVID. Of course we need our infrastructure to be more robust, but no use crying over spilt milk.

There have been calls for some time to treat semiconductor manufacturing as in the interest of national security. The funding and policy isn't onerous to do so, and "never let a crisis go to waste." Something similar was already done for rare earths [1]. [1] https://www.google.com/search?q=rare+earth+us+national+secur...

Something similar was "thought of" for rare earths but I don't think anything practical has come of that yet. Opening new mines in the US is not a process I'd call quick. It's more in the "I'll believe it when I see it" column. You think getting a pipeline across the Midwest is difficult? Just try strip-mining in Alaska.

But yeah, if the government is serious about securing supply chains, then it's not enough to have semiconductor manufacturing here, one also needs to be able to source the inputs closer to home (quartz, etc).

And I'm not even sure it requires government to directly fund the manufacturing/mining - it would be enough if government took a "not-hostile" attitude towards the environmental and engineering approvals, and then incentivized domestic sourcing.

Re: Tech giants join call for funding U.S. chip production

#28

Post by quercusa »

kovacs wrote: post #19
protomyth wrote: post #4

How about you spend some of that cash hoard and do it yourself? I would rather the government start dealing with cyber attacks because that's going to affect the east coast something fierce if this crap keeps going. If the government gives money then it better talk to these companies about where their items are produced.

My exact reaction as well. Or how about all that money used for stock buy backs over the last decade? Intel especially. It's been mismanaged and now it's putting its hand out for government money while having spent billions on stock buy backs. No more but of course it'll happen because the politics of it. Socialism for the rich and corporations, capitalism for the rest of us.

I can't imagine Andy Grove would have supported that.
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