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

washingtonpost.com

441–450 of 489 posts

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

#441
post #331

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?

[deleted]

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

#442
post #331

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?

In an economic system where the rich earn money just from being rich, you have a strong incentive as a politician to sell your country as ten million dollars will result in a perpetual and exponentially growing income stream that exceeds a politicians salary multiple times and you don't even have to lift a finger, just do a single corruption stint and be locked in the upper class with the rest of the wealthy for the rest of your life.

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

#443
post #304

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Poor children are still eligible? Nobody is going hungry

so many "think of the children" arguments without even addressing the fact that literally no one starves in the U.S. for lack of food availability (mental issues can and do lead to starvation though, unfortunately). I for one don't think the federal government should have anything to do with our school systems. That is not their expertise, not their domain and they don't need any temptations or distractions to use th…

> I for one don't think the federal government should have anything to do with our school systems.

I wouldn't go that far. Federal and state governments provide about half of education funding [0] and the way they dish it out is basically inversely proportional to how much funding a school gets through their local property taxes.

Without that, funding would be very unbalanced. Although I'd be fine with reducing federal government funding/taxes with proportionate increase by the states.

[0]: https://apps.urban.org/features/school-funding-do-poor-kids-...

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

#445
post #287

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here's my cynical take: This bill will subsidize a lot of jobs when we already have zero slack in our labor market. I think it's an excellent target for spending and would have a positive multiplier in normal times but in 2022 this seems likely to just goose inflation another inch. Unless we actually start seeing cyclical job losses finally hit right when this money starts being spent. Which is entirely possible.

any way to stop inflation without a needing job losses?

Taxes. People fear capital flight. Where you gonna go?

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

#447

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are basically only 3 close-to-cutting edge foundries left - Intel (American), Samsung (South Korean) and TSMC (Taiwanese), and TSMC is in the lead by quite a bit. We're getting extremely close to the end-game of moore's law, so the lifetime of a <7nm fab is likely to be long, and there are likely to only ever be a handful built because they are absurdly expensive (20+ Billion dollars), particularly if you can't…

Unless I'm mistaken, Micron and Texas Instruments have their own foundries as well.

> Micron and Texas Instruments have their own foundries as well.

At their tech level there's probably hundreds of companies with fabs[1]. GP was explicitly talking about cutting edge fabs.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_semiconductor_fabricat...

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

#448

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Losing that ability to China/Taiwan was just a terrible strategic mistake. More like losing that ability to Taiwan's TSMC and South Korea's Samsung. China's SMIC is very far behind and has insignificant market share. Additionally, it's rather insulting to non-communists when you mishmash together China and Taiwan.

Taiwan is right across the border from China. At any point, they can invade and take over.

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

#449

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m all for healthy free lunches for poor kids. Is it really necessary to give free meals to all Palo Alto kids independent of financial status? https://www.paloaltoonline.com/news/2022/06/19/palo-alto-uni...

The Palo Alto school meals are by no means healthy. At least at my kindergartner’s school last year, nothing’s really prepared onsite, it’s mostly microwave-in-a-bag fast food (factory made burritos, pizza, 2-ingredient sandwiches). Often this would come with a side of fruit (canned and sweetened) and crackers. My kid would always bring a lunch from home but often return with it uneaten, because when you pit healthy…

[deleted]

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

#450
post #388

Earlier quoted context omitted.

main problem is that we are rewarding companies for being disloyal and offshoring in the first place, now they win again with free money after raking in profits for decades. We should have some funding for smaller companies and R&D but also massive tariffs to force companies to bring manufacturing back

TSMC straight out competed the 1st movers in the chip space. They’re not dominant because American companies moved their own factories to Taiwan. It was homegrown and they really nailed it.

TSMC were almost single-handedly bankrolled by Apple. Had Samsung not tried to establish themselves as a competitor to Apple in basically every product offering, they would be in first place.
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