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 current manufacturing is indeed dominated by East Asian countries, the vast majority of research still happens in US universities. This legislation allocates more funding for that research, fantastic.
Theres some political gamesmanship over some silly stock options of congresspeople… my response is, who gives a single shit. The country needs this bill.
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
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 keep them fully utilized. There are no 'smaller companies' with cutting edge fabs, and these aren't really American companies who outsourced and are no bringing them back - Intel has always had a large manufacturing presence in the US, and a large part of this is trying to get foreign companies to 'offshore' fabs to the US rather than continuing to concentrate in south korea / taiwan.
This is true for large digital integrated circuits.
There's also analog fabs, MEMS fabs, LED/photo/laser fabs.
Places like Analog still have smaller fabs like that.
Those fabs also seem likely to create technological progress into the future, and so the US should be funding those too.
They do but they have explicitly given up the game of competing to be the first to the next fastest smallest digital logic (i.e. cutting edge nodes).
Micron is still pushing DRAM and NAND tech but it's more for cost cutting since they are strictly commodities. The work it takes to be a pure-play fab like TSMC is pretty different - lots of working with fabless vendors to bring up their chips. Even Intel isn't any good at this (yet). It's a collaborative process.
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.
> 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
I'm no corporate apologist but the current mess is the result of a government policy designed to encourage globalization. An American company that builds stuff here will always be at a competitive disadvantage versus a foreign company that builds stuff using dramatically cheaper labor.
So I don't think it's really correct to think of these subsidies as "rewards" - it's done strategically to keep American manufacturing alive.
I would suggest that the real alternative is not to fund the smaller companies, but to simply nationalize Intel.
>>While current manufacturing is indeed dominated by East Asian countries, the vast majority of research still happens in US universities. This legislation allocates more funding for that research…>>
I suspect there’s more to it than this, but to the extent there’s not, this doesn’t make much sense. If the monetization of our research ends up in China’s control, how does it help to fund more research. Apparently research is not the problem, manufacturing is.
Can someone else corroborate that is something the US lost because of labor costs? We are constantly told it's R&D and infrastructure costs. How much of that is labor costs?
It almost feels like labor costs is a good story to salve the ego when the US was simply beat on tech and tech investment.
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.
>We need more partners in this not just a handout.
This rings hollow when all of America's major partners are pumping massive subsidies to their domestic companies to win. Case and point SK is subsidizing their Fabs to the tune of $450 Bn.[1]
I did not mean to strike a hollow note. I do not see such vision being applied outside of lets increase competition and spend locally.
How much further will their their money go locally than ours? I want us to spend our money on the next generation but what economic window are we planning to occupy?
> 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.
I think you misread the thrust of this comment. Commenter was likely alluding not to R&D, but an amphibious invasion, as to how it would end up being China. Obviously I don't know how much of that infrastructure would persist to be carried off after that invasion, but it would reasonably be considered 'lost' to the US.
An amphibious assault against a prepared enemy is never easy or straightforward. China doesn't yet have the necessary logistics ships to be able to supply a beachhead so Taiwan should be "safe" for at least a few years.
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 manufacturing might just be too large for the EU to handle.
Many people in Europe keeps saying that e.g. Ericsson could start a fab but I'd be curious to see if a bill like this would succeed in the EU.
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.
>> 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.
Fairly cynical comments on this thread, many trying to uphold American values like "free market", "protectionism is bad", "what about the consumer", "not from my tax money".
I find those remarks pretty naive. Every major power block heavily subsidizes strategic industries, now and forever. It's in no way new or remarkable, nor does it violate some principle. Most of the above concepts are pure fiction.
Semiconductors are not a "free market" in any ordinary sense. It costs tens of billions to enter the market and you'll buy an ASML machine, speaking of dependencies.
It's pretty obvious that this is in response to geopolitical instability. Being geo locked and this not really being a free market at all justify the "unusual" decision.
As is stands, food, energy, and yes...also semiconductors are foundational to a modern digital society. And they're interconnected, without semiconductors you won't have food either.
If you want to know what happens when semiconductors dry up, watch modern Russia. Arguably it's hard to do because of all the propaganda, but pretty much every domestic industry is falling apart, and therefore society falls apart.
Bottom line, don't be naive. Sure it sucks to give rich companies even more money but if that's what it takes, so be it. Also, rich is just one side of the coin, the other is that they spear-headed the information revolution.
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.
Inflation affects the availability of essentials. I'm not saying this is a bad deal just that it's possibly a big trade off doing it right now. It's also conceivable that increased production will alleviate some supply bottlenecks making this neutral on inflation.
Fab guy here. This is excellent news and much needed, but vigilence is needed to make sure it doesn't end up being devoured by crony corporate agenda and it actually results in favorouble pro-US climate for semiconductor manufacturing.
I'd like to share personal experience with how we bankrupted American leadership in cutting edge nodes. Although, it is not lithography related, I was part of a few billion $ ROI program where we'd hot test the chip for binning, best I don't disclose too many details. Let's just say, it was critical so much so that I sat in unmarked buildings. I saw that get transfered under my personal watch to China. We had Chinese employees visit US for 6 months at a time and during this rotation, we'd teach them everything. Had to take a Chinese culture course. Process charts, metrics, drawings and schematics, whitepapers, how everything works, be part of troubleshooting process and then test them for their acuity. This was around 2012-2014. Usually, US semiconductor manufacturers do not transfer fab capabilities to China, only assembly/packaging. But, here, the was a clear violation of backend fab activities that were transferred to China and built out. I visited China for 3 months to get things up and running. This was a brand new process that no one in the world has. All custom equipment from a major Japanese equipment manufacturer. This process was so insane that it took 10 years of development internally to come to this point. Even today, in 2022, no one has replicated it.
This should not have happened IMO from a national security standpoint. But, these things continue to happen and US gov does not have enough insight into America's semiconductor industry when it comes to protecting IP. Far too many things do not require ITAR and are exported without oversight.
I am pretty much against over-regulation, but here there needs to be strict regulation for exporting any semiconductor technologies whether it is fab or assembly or what have you. The entire industry needs to be hamstrung with export control.
This is completely the wrong way to go about it (tax individuals and give the money to big corps). If you want a protectionist measure then implement a protectionist measure, like I don't know, tariffs.
Yet another bill that follows at least the last 40 years of congress doing exactly the wrong thing. (and to be clear this isn't a rant against the Democrats).
I can't help but conclude that this is too little too late. R&D isn't the problem, which is what this bill seems more focused on. The ability to produce affordable chips domestically at affordable prices is the actual problem. North America's first priority isn't access to bleeding edge tech.
> The bill also includes about $100 billion in authorizations over five years for programs such as expanding the National Science Foundation’s work and establishing regional technology hubs to support start-ups in areas of the country that haven’t traditionally drawn big funding for tech.
I can only imagine how bureaucratic the process for accessing those funds will be. More likely, Medium Tech and even Big Tech will be the ones who feed from that trough because they're the only ones willing or able to cut through the red tape.
I've received money from the NSF SBIR grant program and know another half a dozen others who have as well, and while there is certainly a process, it isn't too bad. All the people I know who have received them are at startups and small companies. That said, the NSF does more than just SBIR and I can't speak to any of that.
In retirement, Grove became concerned about the decline of American manufacturing: When he was CEO, Intel not only performed its research and development in the United States, but its manufacturing as well. He was greatly disturbed that more and more American companies produced their products abroad. Concerned about the erosion of the American middle class, he also helped Service Employee International Union leaders Andy Stern and David Rolf conceptualize new ways that the American labor movement might once again flourish.
I disagree that subsidizing R&D to a few companies is going to make us more competitive.
Look at GE or Boeing, it didn’t work out.
What works is a free market. Raise import costs on CPUs and you’ll incentivize building in the US and more companies to form. It costs $0 tax dollars and brings in revenue and high paying jobs. Similar to what we did with car manufacturing.
Tariffs on products we don't have immediate domestic manufacturing capacity for will hurt the economy in the short term, which is not a great move during a period of rising inflation. It's a tough decision though, because it does feel like the better move for the long term.
Congress offloads imposing tariffs to the executive branch, so they'd need to take it back to do that. Otherwise, it's just a countdown for the industry to donate enough to the opposing political party's PACs to get them in office and repeal the looming tariffs.
ie. the current bill only passed because both political parties are fine with giving companies government money.
Intel is still a very large player in chips and dominate in some areas. Even TI which has tons of fabs (not highest end) as well. I don’t really understand this.
TI's fabs are mainly focused on analog, so the requirements are a bit different. IIRC we have 3 130-65nm layers for digital in our mixed signal designs which is roughly on par with a the process technology Intel used in 2005.
I agree tariffs are the right long-term move. I think they just have to be implemented gradually. Just increase it by 4% per year for the next 10 years.
Consider that semiconductor fab has a very high barrier to entry in that the cost and time required to bring it online.
No company presently appears to be poised to build out significant domestic chipmaking capability as far as I know.
I believe that this is where subsidization makes sense, because if we wait for the free market to catch up to the shortfall in supply created by raising import costs, it will ultimately take longer to get the manufacturing capacity online.
Uh I mean yes Boeing is kind of a mess right now, but it's ridiculous to argue that having Boeing based in the US isn't an enormous strategic advantage.
Can you imagine a world where US airlines had to depend on either Airbus or Sukhoi planes? Do you really think that would be better?
I don’t think subsidizing them has been a success. I think tariffs and awarding contracts to the best domestic manufacturers are the way forward. That’s why SpaceX took off, they won contracts.
Boeing effectively lobbied to regulate others out of existence. Bought off who they could, then won grants and contracts because there was no one else.
Can you elaborate? How was Boeing subsidized in this instance and SpaceX not? It's my understanding that it was closer to the other way around. Both Boeing and SpaceX won commercial crew contracts, but Boeing (at the time) had a stronger track record. It was a strategic move by NASA to not put all their eggs in one basket and it worked out well by subsidizing the early dark horse (SpaceX).
Maybe a combination of the approaches. I might actually be in favor of raising import costs if there were a guarantee of some sort that the resulting funds would be applied to jumpstarting domestic chipfab capabilities, specifically to overcoming the initial capital intensive investment required to get started.
> Can you imagine a world where US airlines had to depend on either Airbus or Sukhoi planes? Do you really think that would be better?
Are we going to pretend 737MAX wasn't grounded for a year and half after 2 devastating crashes killing 346 people? I think a world without Boeing would have been clearly better?
>Are we going to pretend 737MAX wasn't grounded for a year and half after 2 devastating crashes killing 346 people? I think a world without Boeing would have been clearly better?
I seriously think you should consider reading the history of air travel, they don't say "regulations are written down in blood" for no reason. There's been many an accident due to a mechanical fault that's eventually remedied.
Its a tragedy but you seriously have to take a breath and think a little. If you want to get into a pissing contest over aircraft manufacturers, the air France 447 (airbus plane) crash was largely caused by the inputs being averaged together. On a Boeing plane, the inputs are synced (one side pushes down, the other side goes down as well). Maybe we should eliminate airbus as well.
Big difference between a mechanical fault and what appears to be regulatory capture from a monopolizing entity causing a very sketchy product to be approved in a safety critical role - which then kills a lot of people.
>Big difference between a mechanical fault and what appears to be regulatory capture
You can't call Airbus's design decision to average the inputs a "mechanical fault", somehow that got approved by regulators.
You are damning Airbus with the same attack you are aiming at Boeing.
The 737-MAX crashes are absolutely horrific and how the FAA responded was terrible. The design was shit and should have had better review, same for Airbus and what caused France 447.
Undoubtedly this is a massive gift from taxpayers to Intel. Hard to see anything good in that.
I also agree that subsidizing R&D isn't a reliable strategy to make us more competitive. Government incentivizes to find solutions works much better.
BUT building high-end fabs is SO very capital intensive, that I think this actually could work out. This might actually be a case where the skids need to be greased a bit (to the tune of billions of dollars) to get them over the hump and back in the game.
Yes it is, there’s always been taxes. Free market typically refers to regulations, free commerce (means ability to buy and sell), etc. that doesn’t mean no taxes, particularly tariffs.
The US federal government was initially only able to make revenue from tariffs. Basically you control the borders, but inside the borders there are no control (ie free market). Once you deal between nations, you cannot have a perfectly free market, else your enemies will eat you. Which imo is what happened the last 50 years.
A tariff is a regulation. Tariffs are the interstate commercial equivalent of Pigovian taxes. When the government puts its thumb on the scale of what should or shouldn't be sold with an extra cost attached, that is not a free market.
Obviously it's less free with tariffs than it would be without, but given the goals of the bill some level of interference is unavoidable. The question is whether to meet those goals with top-down central planning, or by tweaking the incentives and letting the market handle the details on its own. The latter is much more in keeping with free market principles than the former.
Could a market be free without tariffs? Does free not imply competitive?
US policy can't force South Korea or Taiwan to have a free market. No matter what we do, any domestic company has to be able to compete with Samsung and TSC. Because of that, there is no purely "free" global market.
Either you change the rules at the border (tariffs), you match your competitors' strategy (subsidize), or you lose.
No, lettergram is misusing the term 'free market'. Free marketeers don't just want less government enterprise, they also want lower tariffs and light regulation.
Unfortunately, this is true. We have to subsidize the industry because other countries are subsidizing them. We can't compete on a level playing field because there isn't one.
There is no “free market” here.. other players in this field like samsung and tsmc are neck deep in govt funding. The question is are we ok handing over the top spot for such an important technology - most likely the most important technology right now- to foreign manufacturers?
i'm with you that a tariff scheme is better than giving money to large corps, which always puts money in the pockets of the already rich rather than into creating customer surplus and driving innovation. there is a (mostly front-loaded) cost, but there is also a clear net benefit in the long run. the tariff scheme just needs to be graduated (both on and off) and based on industry milestones. if it isn't ramped down as soon as feasible, then it becomes a overly-depended-upon subsidy and a market distortion masking price signals instead.
because we know there is a large and likely growing demand for semiconductors, it's not a very risky bet for us to be subsidizing it via trade restrictions for some finite amount of time.
There is no such thing as "the free market" - it's this mythologized idea that people keep pushing, usually to damage workers so they can ship jobs offshore.
If anything, the more something resembles a "free market", the worse it is - you don't think Intel wouldn't poison the water supply if it juiced the Q4 earnings?
It's always more economical to just dump the toxic waste into the local river. If anything these subsidies even the playing field for people who don't think that's a good idea.
There are absolutely free markets, usually small, niche, some under ground. Just because you don't see it, doesn't mean it doesn't exist. The world, and its economies, are more complex then you, I or anyone on this board can comprehend
Lol the whole point of the US design was to allow the free market internally. Externally it was designed to be protectionist.
I agree “free market” today is insane. Initially the federal governments only source of revenue was tariffs, so it would protect domestic production. This makes the US independent and wealthy.
You can’t have an international “free market” system unless you don’t want to protect domestic production. Which imo is what the US did starting in the 70s until today.
"The General Market's mechanisms are always operating - even when governments like to believe they've overruled it. For guns and bombs and red tape and regulations can only obstruct a consumer's quest for what he wants; they can never destroy his insatiable desire to improve his life and enjoy greater mental well-being.
The self-interest of each human being, his continual search for whatever he wants, is a natural law. Governments can make it difficult for him, but their roadblocks only cause him to seek other avenues in order to get what he wants.
As a result, the General Market will always triumph eventually whenever there's a conflict between consumer desires and government interference. And it's vitally important to understand this. For it's the reassertion of the market's sovereignty as the ruler of the world that's causing today's economic upheavals."
This looks like an appeal to nature, concerning a form of conduct that could just as well be conditioned in individuals.
It also seems to place the government in direct opposition with the wants of consumers, without acknowledging at all the fact that markets are just as often made unfree by the actions of its private actors.
Such a monumental scam and a gross theft from taxpayers. Companies making billions of dollars in profits don't need free money. I could be onboard with a subsidized loan, but handouts are not needed.
FWIW, I work at a company that stands to benefit from this bill.
Does the US need to secure reliable semiconductor supply chains free of China? Sure. This is not the most cost effective way to do it.
Clearly, handouts are needed to force/incentivize these companies to build new fabs in the continental US. Otherwise they would have built them under their own gumption by now.
When there is no clear benefit for the company to fab chips in the continental US, and a lot of clear negatives (cost, regulations, etc) - you have to do something to outweigh the cons. If the US had been an amazing place to fab chips already, hand-outs would be completely unnecessary and we would already have a bustling chip fabbing industry. But... we don't.
Perhaps after handing out all this "free" money, lawmakers need to take a long hard look at why our chip fabbing industry has nearly vanished.
Fabs are only a small part of the supply chain. Any one of the thousands of critical components that go into maintenance or manufacturing put the whole thing at risk. Just dumping money on industry will not solve this. Having a dirt to package solution with everything domestically produced would and it doesn't need to be the latest process node, that is ridiculous and folks that advocate for that don't see the forest for the trees.
> Clearly, handouts are needed to force/incentivize these companies to build new fabs in the continental US. Otherwise they would have built them under their own gumption by now.
I don't have a problem with government subsidy for jumpstarting industry, but it's absurd to give the money to Intel and AMD. They profited massively from offshoring their production. If we are going to spend money (and I agree we must), it should be invested in new competition so that Intel and AMD have to spend their largess on fixing their business model to compete.
Or, chips just become 20% more expensive in the US and the consumer loses... and the US still doesn't gain supply chain security.
I don't think tariffs will work when the alternative requires massive outlay of capital and decades to recoup.
Not to mention, there is no reality where manufacturing these chips in the US costs less than Taiwan, for example. There is no reason to build a fab in the US with the current economic and regulatory climate. So... we have to force it to happen... which is what this bill does.
Intel had profits of $20B last year. They could easily build a new modern fab every year if they wanted to. But it makes more sense for them to spend tax payers money instead.
Amazon went years basically making no money because they were reinvesting and in a growth stage. Intel could do the same. They just need to convince investors of the new narrative. Wall Street doesn't demand profits if you deliver promises.
Without getting political - does it even matter anymore? Trillions of dollars were just thrown out the window to whoever could catch some... and few if anyone has any idea where most of it actually went.
At least this money will have a tangible, appreciable outcome. Supply chain security for such critical things such as chips is really hard to overstate the importance of for the US.
I think in this case the US is different than say Chile because its such a large market. AKA its large enough to support home grown manufacturing if the incentives aren't out of wack.
The chicken tax, as been an incredibly efficient way to assure that car's are manufactured in the USA, so much so that the cost difference between a Ford manufactured in Mexico and a Toyota manufactured in TX is basically 0.
How is this not the consumer still losing, though?
There is no reality where manufacturing a car in Mexico costs the same as in Michigan. We've artificially increased the cost of the Mexico product... that is what will happen if you try that approach with chips - they will be more expensive for no real good reason.
It also appears to cost many multiples more capital to build a chip fab than a car plant according to these sources[1][2].
Well its MX, vs TX, so maybe that is part of it, but I suspect there are other more significant differences, like for example ford sells ~7x the number of F-150's as Toyota sells Tundra's and that is only reflected in a ~3K difference in base price.
Its hard to have an exact 1:1 comparison, but I think most people would agree they are roughly the same price for roughly the same product. And yet one is largely designed and manufactured in the USA (the Toyota).
So, maybe they it costs more to employ someone in San Antonio, but maybe that doesn't really matter in the grand scheme of things vs flying engineers to MX to work out kinks in the assembly line.
And its probably the same with semiconductor manufacturing. Intel isn't behind because it costs more to manufacture things in the US, they are behind because they didn't invest in EUV, and made some technical mistakes, as well as business mistakes around contract manufacturing and refusing low margin deals.
I think if you look at the results of the IBM/Lenovo deals its abundantly clear that where the manufacturing was located had nothing to do with the success of the products (It was outsourced to Lenovo long before it became their business). The American management was the problem, and kicking it to the curb allowed them to grow the business 10X+.
And lets not ignore Samsung which has a large fab just down the road from me. So it can't be a terrible environment for USA based semiconductors if a Korean company is willing to fab things here.
> Clearly, handouts are needed to force/incentivize these companies to build new fabs in the continental US. Otherwise they would have built them under their own gumption by now.
That doesn't make sense. I could declare that lollypops are needed, or a third sequel to Space Jam on the same evidence. It's just affirming the consequent. I think that these companies aren't building new fabs because I personally am too poor, so the best way to get us out of this rut is to hand me the billions.
edit: the government needs to stop giving wealthy people money. Buy equity in the companies and get on their boards, don't just hand wealthy people cash and pretend it's capitalism.
The opposite direction of motivation is to tariff semiconductor imports and still I doubt a quarter of a trillion dollars would be invested so fast.
Geopolitical issues forcing this aren't the fault of the semiconductor providers, decades of policy are at fault for letting the situation get this bad.
And to be fair future taxes will recoup some of this, as will the value provided to the state of an increased reliability of sourcing semiconductors.
It may not be the most cost-effective solution but it's the solution we need at this point because China isn't our friend and increasingly seems like won't be.
Cost is not the only consideration. I fear for people who only focus on one issue and ignore the rest. Rarely do we see congressional leaders agreeing on this scale. I would say they find that reliance on China to be a threat to National Security. US and China communications is zero and even lower than it was during the Cold War. Pelosi story on visiting Taiwan should give you an idea of the stakes that are play. China siding with Russia should be the final consideration of the United States commitment to Democracy and people. Cost is really just one data point and should not be the only consideration. This concept can be applied to many more things, and I think you should rethink.
You can't wave the magic wand of national security and justify any inefficient or ineffective attempt at stealing from the future to goose the present.
The short term goal should be to diversify critical US supply chains away from a country that is currently considered by the US to be an competitor. I'm sure you remember that US official policy since the 70s is the "One China Policy" which admits that Taiwan is a part of China and that only attempts to reunify by force will be responded to(*). So the US needs to move supply chains out of PRC/ROC, but moving them to S. Korea, Japan, or dozens of other friendly nations is an acceptable goal from a national security standpoint.
* - I'm not a fan of this, but it is what it is. I didn't realize it until recently.
One of the most pernicious myths about this situation out there is that there is a single "One China Policy" shared by everyone on earth. This is not the case. The One China Policy of the US is different to that of the PRC. And I quote:
- The United States did not explicitly state the sovereign status of Taiwan in the three US-PRC Joint Communiques of 1972, 1979, and 1982.
- The United States "acknowledged" the "One China" position of both sides of the Taiwan Strait.
- U.S. policy has not recognized the PRC's sovereignty over Taiwan;
- U.S. policy has not recognized Taiwan as a sovereign country; and
- U.S. policy has considered Taiwan's status as unsettled.
Next time you read a news story about this issue, take note of the fact that PRC officials use the term "the One China policy" while US officials use the term "our 'One China' policy".
Correct. I was still surprised to see how far the US OCP goes towards appeasing the PRC though. In spirit, it seems well out of line with how Taiwan policy is proceeding these days. As far as I understand it, there is no outcome where the US will recognize a permanently independent Taiwan. That's unfortunate.
> Rarely do we see congressional leaders agreeing on this scale.
There has been widespread bipartisan support for the military-industrial complex for as long as Eisenhower (correctly) warned about the military-industrial complex.
Partisan disagreements just tend to make the headlines more often.
China has the best chance of ending the war by aligning itself with the western world and imposing sanctions. They are trading partners and could threaten and stop to buy gas/oil/goods from Russia and Putin would have no choice but to retreat. By turning a blind eye, it certain China is supporting Russia.
They are imposing sanctions - they have pulled of from some strategic investments, they limited electronics sales, they just don't make much fuss about it, because they aren't Americans.
As for the gas - it's quite probable that even before the war Russians were selling it at loss, purely to stay relevant. Which means China buying it hurts Russian economy more than keeping away. And of course it benefits China.
Besides - what exactly would be the point of isolating Russia altogether? A new USSR? Because that's precisely what Rashists want. China wants a pacified, but functioning vassal state instead. Or perhaps states, because there's no reason really for anything east of Ural to remain with Russia.
Often times the people in any individual nation don't want to hear it, but nations are in competition with each other to attract business.
This undermines any other function of what people think a government is there for and the system that government operates under. If people were told anything else, they were told a lie.
There are different people operating under more effective set of rules, and they can pit countries against each other to sweeten the deal of operating within that country.
Its just simply a more effective set of rules than whatever people were taught in their civics class, or by an animated sheet of paper singing about how bills are formed.
Another way of looking at this is that under regulation of competing industries in other countries requires intervention (be it via tariff or subsidy).
I think people here have argued the strengths/weaknesses of each approach. The best solution is likely some nuanced mix of the two, but nuanced policy is hard to create and I rather we eat the costs of any of the two approaches that are more likely to be adopted today rather than continue to take no action.
Have the DOD force its suppliers to make their things in the US? Only allow them to import raw materials or low value manufactured elements. Just throwing ideas, might not be practical...
People already complain about the infamous "$5,000" wrenches and other silly ITAR compliance shenanigan's the DoD plays and drains their coffers... leading to increases in funding over the past many decades.
Have the DOD force its suppliers to make their things in the US? Only allow them to import raw materials or low value manufactured elements. Just throwing ideas, might not be practical...
Are there controls on what suppliers charge? If not, what prevents them from charging as much or more than would be spent on subsidies? If so, what prevents suppliers from just choosing to opt out of the transaction entirely?
Agreed with this. Has many benefits, including that the profits flow back to the taxpayers rather than to corporations and shareholders. Semiconductors are too important to national security to be controlled by profit seeking corporations whom have little allegiance to the nation or the people.
So what is the most cost effective way to do so? China's pouring hundreds of billions in subsidies into fabs. South Korea is pouring hundreds of billions in subsidies.
Tariffs alone would only allow for domestic balancing of those subsidies but lose you the global market. So again, what would you recommend instead.
China is going to insist on a lot of control over the companies that it subsidizes, and South Korea is just hopelessly corrupt. If we went the China route, that's fine, but instead we do welfare for billionaires again.
The reason why non-US cities manufacture so many semiconductors is that there is simply no profit. Capitalism has pushed manufacturing overseas. There are roughly 100-1000 more ARM chips than Intel chips in the world, but the profit margins are miniscule compared to Intel. If Intel made commodity chips, their shareholders would lose value. This bill basically subsidizes the already wealthy to get more wealth and probably won't do much since China will continue to expand while US fabs come online. Free hand of the market my ass.
I'd like to see a matching consumer side tax. Basically forced on shoring and user pay taxation (instead of taxing my grandma who uses about 0 chips, lol more than amazon who uses millions/billions of chips but pays next to no taxes)
Opening up the possibility that other countries, friendly to the US, could also produce some of our semiconductors. We can work to expand S. Korean capacity, for instance. We also don't need to dump money on a problem that would respond to more gentle incentives like low interest rate loans, laws favoring government purchasing of chips from aligned nations, and incentives to boost the infrastructure needed to manufacture chips. One big piece of bringing back mfg to the US is considering expedited environmental review in limited economic zones and commitments to improving our energy and chemical industries which feed into semis. You could write a book on ways to do it, but stealing money from the future and raining it onto companies that already make billions in profits is comically short sighted.
Would there be a domestic target for the same ideas that you'd propose a foreign one(s), or do you believe there to be something more virtuous about South Korea et. al that'd make them better recipients of such things?
> In a 64-33 vote, the Senate passed the $280 billion “Chips and Science Act,” the final iteration of a bill that was years in the making. About $52 billion would go to microchip manufacturers to incentivize construction of domestic semiconductor fabrication plants
I think so as well, in particular I believe that countries with a large population of young will be the biggest beneficiaries of companies exiting China.
It's going to take some time to get back to scale but I believe India, Vietnam, Southeast Asia stands to be the biggest winners.
I do not see China returning to status quo anytime soon. It's more likely that they will fall victim to nationalistic fervor and close its doors.
"Global interconnection" is not the same thing as "globalization". In many ways they're actually opposed. With globalization comes increased strength of patent and copyright laws and much more control over what crosses what borders
There's a direct relationship between international trade agreements and border security
So, your position is that this century long trend of globalization is over and all systemic mechanism that enable it will somehow, someway, cease. Or, what exactly? What is your position? Because, if for example, the crisis in Ukraine has shown, countries need more diversification, not less.
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.
The investment could be a special class of stock that would be contingent upon building fabs with installments on completion of milestones or a penalty to the company applies. The penalty could be applied in many ways like direct tariffs on that company, penalty tax, direct cash penalty, or even nationalization of the company in extreme circumstances.
As a Chinese, I would like to say that as far as I know, China is investing heavily in semiconductors, but without high-end production equipment, it is difficult to produce high-precision chips
There's a good reason these litography machines and other CNC equipment have GPS sensitive tracking. Even a slight deviation renders the equipment non-operable and dials home immediately if they lose connectivity.
The sane way to do this would have been to give the handouts on condition of no stock buybacks for 10 years and cap total exec compensation for similar amount of time for any company that accepts the handouts.
This should be true for any company that accepts gov money.
The gov doesn't give money to benefit the stockholders, they’re doing it to benefit the larger economy and country. Stock holder shouldn’t even be considered as beneficiaries in these deals.
You have a great idea. It would be tough corralling the boards and execs of these companies to accept Gov money that limits their compensation. Still, with competition, one company would be incentivized to take the money.
Why wouldn't it benefit? the idea would to be prevent giving a handout to the shareholders through unethical means. When you sign a contract with someone you are bound by the contract, for some reason you and most company executives are having trouble understanding that. They all (you) think, "if I can take someone else's money and run, then I should, my word and agreements be damned." That anathema to a civil society.
I'll address your disingenuous reply to me above over here:
Stock buybacks and executive bonuses are things you give out when the company is doing well -- through its own means, not when you get charity from the government because you screwed up for 30 years and failed to invest and innovate. If intel which had record profits last year and revenues in excess of $70billion needs a handout because it doesn't have the money to invest in the US, then it shouldn't be allowed to reward it's owners and failed executives until the US government gets a return on its investment.
It takes 5 years to bring a fab online and 5 years to see the economic impact of that new fab, so 10 years before they're allowed to start rewarding their owners again. Or return the money early and then you can do stock buybacks, and phat exec bonuses.
> Why wouldn't it benefit? the idea would to be prevent giving a handout to the shareholders through unethical means. When you sign a contract with someone you are bound by the contract, for some reason you and most company executives are having trouble understanding that. They all (you) think, "if I can take someone else's money and run, then I should, my word and agreements be damned." That anathema to a civil society.
Can you explain to me how shareholder benefit from such a deal when the deal is preventing them from benefiting from it? Why would shareholders (the owners of the company) ever voluntarily take such a deal?
No one is saying agreements shouldn't be fulfilled, but I'd like to note that you still haven't explained why the company should ever take such a deal, when it does not benefit the shareholders (you know, the ones the company is supposed to be working for)
>Stock buybacks and executive bonuses are things you give out when the company is doing well -- through its own means, not when you get charity from the government because you screwed up for 30 years and failed to invest and innovate.
Why do you believe that's the case?
Stock buybacks (like dividends) are merely ways to put cash from the right pocket (the companies bank accounts) into the left pocket (the bank accounts of the shareholders), shareholders own the cash all the same.
No one is asking shareholders to do anything… We’re having the government give the company money for a joint venture. If the company uses it wisely in the way they promise they would, everyone, including the shareholders benefit.
If the company cynically takes the money, intentionally fails to uphold their side of the contract, and then rebuffs attempts by the government to reclaim the money, while that might be in the interest of the shareholders they haven’t actually done anything there and don’t deserve to benefit. In fact they should be punished (along with the executives) for being unethical.
>No one is asking shareholders to do anything… We’re having the government give the company money for a joint venture. If the company uses it wisely in the way they promise they would, everyone, including the shareholders benefit.
The company belongs to the shareholders, that's what being a shareholder means.
Let me quote you:
>The sane way to do this would have been to give the handouts on condition of no stock buybacks for 10 years and cap total exec compensation for similar amount of time for any company that accepts the handouts.
>This should be true for any company that accepts gov money.
>The gov doesn't give money to benefit the stockholders, they’re doing it to benefit the larger economy and country. Stock holder shouldn’t even be considered as beneficiaries in these deals.
You'll note that not a single word in that post said anything about the company not holding up its end of the bargain. And indeed you made no mention as to why "stock buybacks" or "total exec compensation" would prevent the company from holding up its end.
Let's be clear here about what you're doing, you're so focused on hurting shareholders, you don't even care if the results you get are compatible with what you state you want.
We support strategic defense industries [1] in the U.S. so I don't understand how offshoring chip making was ever allowed to happen
[1] As a former sub sailor, I'm aware that we kept submarine building capability afloat at New London, CT and Newport News, VA even when there is no current demand, but this was long ago and may no longer be true
That's capitalism, baby! It turns out domestic chip fabrication wasn't competitive (in this case a rare double-whammy of failing to compete on both cost and capability). The global market determined that Taiwan and South Korea made the best and cheapest chips so that's where all the manufacturing went. Demand for semiconductors is overwhelmingly not created by the military so it doesn't really make sense to compare it to submarines.
> Demand for semiconductors is overwhelmingly not created by the military
That may be true, but semiconductors are absolutely crucial to the military. I suppose the military has their own fabs locally located in partnership with Intel, AMD, IBM, TI, etc...
If we had sufficient capacity to make all of our chips onshore, what about all the other components to go along with them. Do we have enough domestic production of passive components, circuit board stock, solder, etc?
More pork for their cronies and donor class buddies. Much like the pandemic aid such as the PPP I’m sure fractions of a dollar actually make it into anything of use.
Just more public money to develop private intellectual property. In a few years we'll be paying more for chips and IP that was developed using tax payer coin.
With no context, I'm not sure what you mean by this; but, without saying anything about the validity of the position, it's probably worth noting (as you surely know) that Reagan said this to satirize "big-government" perspectives on taxation. It was not his policy statement.
Funny but it turns out subsidization is pretty much the only way we've ever gotten things done. The most productive economies have ever been have always been wartime economies when gov't basically takes full control of every aspect
Look at your iPhone. That touch screen, GPS, the internet, voice-assistant AI, etc. It's all a collection of government technologies. Economist Mariana Mazzucato has written[0] about the myth of private sector innovation in depth. Even the industrial revolution was driven through purposeful government investment.
Another economist, Ha-Joon Chang, has written[1] extensively about this as well. The same tools the US used to build itself up (subsidization, tariffs, gov't programs, etc) are the first things that the US (through World Bank and IMF) bans with "structural adjustment" policies when these countries inevitably can't pay back the loan that was shoved down their throats. They "liberate" the economy. In other words remove any local protections from competition by US companies that are themselves heavily subsidized. And also get rid of any government services and leave it up to the "free market"
The thing is that this is just the way anything gets done. Just look at Walmart.[2] Internally, it's the largest planned economy ever invented. Many magnitudes larger than the Soviet Union ever was. Anybody who's sold a product at Walmart stores knows that once you make the deal you've basically given up all control to them. They decide what gets produced in what factories and when and how much
Contrast that with something like Sears that tried the "free market" approach internally. They let their stores compete with each other and tried to have minimal centralized intervention in what each store does. Sears failed... And so did their Ayn Rand-obsessed CEO.
So who is the primary benefactor of this Pork? Seems like this hasn't already been done is because it isn't profitable or scaleable like software is. It's not like there is a shortage of investors in technology.
The headline is wrong and deceiving. The semiconductor part is 52 billion. Still a lot of graft and corruption for negligent management. They could have given them tax subsidies for capex investment for example instead of corporate handouts and payoffs to the Pelosi stock positions.
Putting aside the fact the HN title is completely different from the article title, I don't even see where $280B (in the HN title) comes from... There's a $250B mentioned in the article body, not a $280B.
I don't mean to be rude, but your list of questions is a perfect example of why this type of test would be meaningless.
* What is a data base
- Are you asking what type of military base stores data? Or did you mean database?
* What is personal identifiable identification and why does it matter?
- Do you mean PII (personally identifiable information)? Or are you talking about a driver's license?
* What does a walled garden mean
- Are you talking about what is in my back yard? What is around a castle? Or Apple's App Store?
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.
I agree at least half of the lawmakers probably couldn't correctly (enough) answer those questions.
Though there are a number of really savvy ones like Wyden (D-OR) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ron_Wyden That senator has done good work, even if I don't live in Oregon anymore.
While unquestionably semis, etc. are of vital US concern. However, why should the companies be subsidized by the taxpayer? All of these companies are profitable. All are multi-national. All can sell every chip they make, etc. This smacks of Soviet style industrial policy or crony capitalism, if you prefer. And in the end, when the subsidies cease, they will again shop themselves to the highest bidder. Strikes me as extremely short sighted.
Anyone remember how the capital-owning class and their pet politicans were blaming inflation on Covid stimulus checks (eg [1])?
I want you to remember that when you see bills like this one.
Why? Because most of the Covid relief didn't go to individuals. It went to companies. In many cases, the stimulus was to avoid layoffs. Companies laid people off anyway (eg [2]) and used the money for share buybacks. Some governments used the money to build prisons (eg [3]). Biden, before testing positive for Covid, was intending to announce the use of Covid money for increased police funding [4].
My point is that very little of that Covid stimulus made it to consumers but it had a dramatic impact on temporarily eliminating or reducing poverty [5].
Yet giving people money is often viewed as a moral hazard.
Yet we're so willing to give away hundreds of billions to companies while not expecting them to take any sort of haircut on record profits in an era of massive inflation.
Also, let's not forget what happened to Wisconsin and Foxconn [6].
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 get to control the agenda, and they get to decide what is "affordable" and "too expensive."
> 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, that's derailing discussion about this.
More accurately: there's more consensus around national security spending than social spending. The government has decided it would rather have the economy depend on large American companies for these critical components than on large Chinese companies.
And that might have follow-on effects that mean more jobs for Americans so fewer kids are poor and need subsidized school lunches.
I suppose if you're unhappy with that write your senators, and ask them to pass laws requiring purchases from the lowest-cost global supplier (e.g. not American), and use the money saved for welfare subsidies.
The point isn't that its one or the other, the point is that spending on social programs is much cheaper than national security programs and makes a more meaningful difference in more peoples lives. The point is that either-or is a false dichotomy, we can have good social safety nets and still have robust national security. The reason we don't have both isn't that we can't afford both, its that much of this country views poverty as a moral failing and intentionally neglects the poor because "they deserve it".
> makes a more meaningful difference in more peoples lives
Many people in this country want their chances to be better, and not have those opportunities distributed evenly. They want a shot of improving their status by ascending career, wealth, and opportunity gradients. This is how they vote. This is how companies operate too.
On the flip side, true universal equity doesn't even stop at the national boarder. If you're a proponent of equitability for all, then you want to distribute all high income jobs, housing, medical care, and wealth all around the world and give everyone access and good chances. To some degree this has happened with manufacturing. In time it will happen to knowledge work as well.
There are problems with both models of the world. Power and resources become concentrated. With slowing growth, wealth building up the lower class of one nation leads to the eroding of the middle class in another.
It's unclear to me that these choices are even the ones that will dominate the future outcomes for our civilization. It's resource reallocation. The big trends will be war, technological disruptions, and ecosystem changes.
> the point is that spending on social programs is much cheaper than national security programs and makes a more meaningful difference in more peoples lives
That's not the point presented by the OP. If he was to advance such a point, he'll have to cite a research that shows that investing in poorer families will lead to semi-conductor advancement in the country.
Unless you think the US (or any reasonably advanced big economy) doesn't need a competitive semi-conductor industry.
It seems like the burden of proof should be the other way around. The proponents of this bill should have to prove to the hungry and poor that handouts to Intel are ultimately better for them than food in their mouths and money in their pockets.
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.
Think you can have an effect by contacting your elected officials? Public preference has almost no impact on what legislation gets passed. Not to mention all the gerrymandering...
Your first two sources are just comparing spending to returns. It doesn't address the hard question which is about causality.
A better explanation for The American Jobs Creation Act is probably the fact that republicans support lower taxes, and they won in 2016.
Regarding the Microsoft case with the IRS, perhaps the fact that everyone hates the IRS is a better explanation?
>Public preference has almost no impact on what legislation gets passed.
Why would it have a significant impact? We don't pass laws by poll.
>Not to mention all the gerrymandering
This one seems real from what I've seen, but I need to look into it more, and I don't think it should be tied very closely to money in politics.
I doubt it. The parallels of this rhetoric from the war on terror is stark. You can put anything under the umbrella of national security, and your average senator is perfectly aware of that. A theoretical threat to semiconductor distribution pails in comparison to the actual threat of climate change or the real threat of poverty which millions of Americans are facing.
No, I don’t believe the senators looked at this with an unbiased mind and came to this conclusion on their own volition. Much rather, they rely on some funding for their campaigning, and said funding had a deep influence on their decision. Not rational thinking.
Securing core resources has been a long standing national security concern for countries. Also, there’s a good chunk of populist isolationist sentiment in the zeitgeist.
Senators aren’t unbiased. They’re biased towards what their voters want. If they step out of line, they’ll likely get crushed.
I don’t think money in politics is very explanatory. It seems a basic understanding of the 3 branches and the interplay between the states and federal government explains a lot.
I think you might be underestimating voter apathy. Voter apathy stems further then low voter turnout, it also includes people who vote despite not caring or despite not believing their values will not be represented in that vote. That is, the lesser of two evils is a very real thing for many (most?) voters.
For that to be true there would have to be some dissonance between what voters actually want and to what their representatives actually deliver. If you don’t believe this dissonance exist, then sure, there is nothing I can say to convince you otherwise. I on the other hand, not only believe such dissonance exist, but is a fundamental flaw in our democracy.
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.)
>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.
This is wrong. That's not what lobbying is understood to be. I think you're confusing lobbying with campaign contributions or PAC money. Lobbying is basically just advocating.
>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.
That's kind of dodging the question. Why are there so few funding sources then?
That's fair. I was imprecise: I should have made it explicit that I was speaking about lobbying in America:
> The one big difference between the US and the EU is that the majority of policymakers in the EU institutions are not elected, and since they do not need to stand for elections, they do not need to find the significant amounts of cash to support campaigns. Instead of spending innumerable hours fundraising, they balance competing interests in an effort to produce policies that are seen as legitimate, though produced by a less-than-democratic supranational structure. https://www.politico.eu/article/why-lobbying-in-america-is-d...
US Lobbyists funneled a total of 3.77 billion dollars into campaign coffers in 2021, and are already over 2 billion for 2022. I hope it's not necessary to point out that they're not doing that without the expectation of a return on that investment (and as we've already seen, they absolutely are getting that ROI.)
> That's kind of dodging the question. Why are there so few funding sources then?
Not sure I see how it's dodging the question, especially since my following paragraph continues not dodging it in greater detail.... but setting that aside, the obvious answer to "why are there so few funding sources" is "there is a finite number of wealthy individuals and organizations", with a side order of "and they tend to consolidate their lobbying activities into industry groups". (To be specific, in 2022 that finite number is 11,441.)
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.
I'm open to debate. But I think the OP is erroneous in presuming popular will is expressed in American National Security and Foreign policy and therefore using that to lend credence to this turn of events.
In the abstract it seems much easier to get alignment on a national security question (especially one as cut and dry as this one, which is don’t let your nation’s semiconductor supply fall under the control of a hostile foreign country), than it is to get alignment on a much more ideological and philosophical question about how to solve poverty.
There is nothing abstract in politics and that's just plain old "begging the question".
> especially one as cut and dry as this one, which is don’t let your nation’s semiconductor supply fall under the control of a hostile foreign country
Cut and dry to whom? And were it so cut and dry why is a subsidy the solution rather than any number of other legislative actions?
> than it is to get alignment on a much more ideological and philosophical question about how to solve poverty
Free lunch for students is hardly an attempt to "solve poverty".
On one subject you are asking to do politics in a vacuum because it is the status quo and on the other imply a heavy ideological weight.
In reality both things are equally ideological, the only difference you're asserting is that a nationalistic defense ideology should be taken for granted and perhaps that it is popular.
I think it's pretty cut and dry to people who pay attention to what fuels a modern economy: semiconductors. If you have a problem with the subsidies themselves that's a disagreement about implementation, and to an extent I would agree that some additional tariffs are in order - beyond the subsidies.
>Free lunch for students is hardly an attempt to "solve poverty".
Well sure, but any time someone disagrees with the policy of "free lunches" (as if there was such a thing) you get asked "what, do you hate poor people"? Which sends you down a spiral of debate on what the appropriate policy should be to solve a complex problem ... like poverty.
>the only difference you're asserting is that a nationalistic defense ideology should be taken for granted and perhaps that it is popular.
I'm asserting that semiconductors are what make things comfortable in modern society, which isn't really a contested point as far as I'm aware. I'm not really making any commentary on the wisdom of a "nationalistic defense ideology", which in my mind would be something quite different and go much further than "subsidies for building chips in the US".
I'm sensing that a lot of the hostility in this thread has to do with how we already spend so much money on the MIC, and while it's true that we do spend a lot of money on the MIC, semiconductors are markedly different, because military hardware and weapons aren't consumer products. Semiconductors go into everything. I feel like I'm repeating myself here, and it seems odd to me because I would've expected folks on this website to understand this.
> I think it's pretty cut and dry to people who pay attention to what fuels a modern economy
That's a value judgementon your part which happens to agree with what passes for wisdom in the natsec press and that's literally my entire point. Justifying a government action as status quo opinion is how a status quo is maintained and how an entire class of journalism and foreign policy acts as if the world is its oyster and as if there is no alternative. This is literally the hypothesis of manufacturing consent.
> Well sure, but any time someone disagrees with the policy of "free lunches" (as if there was such a thing) you get asked "what, do you hate poor people"?
You're not talking to "anyone", you're talking to me and I never made that point.
> I feel like I'm repeating myself here, and it seems odd to me because I would've expected folks on this website to understand this.
I'm not sure what other conversations you've had but I'm not arguing the merits of some semiconductor protectionism. I'm arguing against the OPs shrug that we should uncritically accept this spending because it's an outflowing of the Democratic process.
How is this a cut and dry question? By your definition is there any national security question that isn't cut and dry?
Would adding three more carrier groups to the Pacific likewise be a cut and dry question? What about scuttling three carrier groups? What about another three hundred ICBMs to the nuclear arsenal? Hundred-year leases on seven new army bases in Poland? Another trillion or two on building a new fighter jet?
These all seem about as cut and dry. Which is to say, not at all.
It's correct to observe that piling mountains of money into the military-industrial complex tends to have consensus in Congress, but let's not confuse that with the questions having a 'cut and dry' answer.
I'm not following why you seem to think those things are comparable. Semiconductors go into nearly everything today, from your phone to your car to your refrigerator. An ICBM isn't a consumer product that is the literally lifeblood of the modern economy, like semiconductors are. If you're hostile to "piling mountains of money into the military-industrial complex", as I am but probably for different reasons, then that's great, but it's a separate issue from securing access to a capability to produce a technology that maintains our standard of living.
So, yeah, it really is that cut and dry. A "National Security Issue" doesn't always mean "weapon" or "air craft carrier". This is a rare moment when, even if it's for cynical and self-serving reasons, some money is going to be spent on something that actually matters and will help secure future prosperity. Do get mad about the MIC, though. I still am as well.
I'm not them, but it's an invitation for a different answer than the one that seems obviously true. I don't think that it's constructive or less "argumentative" to work to come up with a framing for a question that makes it seem less one sided; making the answer less obvious is the job of people who have a different opinion.
True, the natsec Republican your polity elected did have to overcome a natsec Democrat or visa-versa.
I encourage you to attend some meetings of your local party Republican or Democrat (whichever is dominant) and see how the people you get to elect are chosen. What you'll find is the folks controlling that process are deeply under the influence of a status quo and that most unorthodoxy there is very quickly marginalized.
I'm not talking about crackpots. I'm talking often qualified people who don't match the entrepreneur, small business owner, veteran, firefighter, nurse template that local bourgeoisie party leaders tend to endorse and find funding for.
IMO, this preference has lead to a clear preference for statism and state violence amongst our elected officials as the people who rise through the rabks tend toward an implicit trust in the institutions of the martial state from the criminal justice sysyem to a standing military.
Maybe. I haven't really read enough about anarchism as a political philosophy to say. But I do see that politicians have in common a basic fundamental belief in the institutions of the state. The Democrats give more credence to the civil bureaucracy and the Republicans give more credence to the martial bureaucracy but they overlap a lot.
And in my experience this has a lot to do the low level party operatives whose hands are on the scale at the primary level.
How many marginalized people actually ever make it into office? Virtually none and so that is a perspective that is completely unrepresented. It's stalwart statists all the way down, they mostly just disagree on what the state violence should be used to enforce.
Sadly many people that vote only care about a small number of issues and just choose a candidate based off those. Gun control and abortion are high on those lists for both sides.
Ah, yes, the ol' write your congresspeople. Part of the problem is that for years they are running on these platforms saying they will help the people but end up not doing any of the things they say they are going to do.
Then it should be pretty easy to undermine your democracy. Just increase the number of people per representative such that each representative has plenty of constituents that align with whomever pays most into your campaign.
And alas, USA is one of the least represented democracies in the world at 596,060 constituents per legislator. Compared to China’s 454,930, Brazil’s 353,783, South Africa’s 98,726 or France’s 71,631 constituent per legislator.
I hate to refer you to a search engine, look for any major issue where the population differs in opinion to the donor class. An obvious place to start is with healthcare, where even slight majorities of Republicans wanted it socialized (at least before 2016) but picking out issues is a waste of time. The vast majority of the public has no influence on public policy. The elite consensus becomes policy 100% of the time. If there isn't an elite consensus (on around 11% of studied issues), the median public preference is chosen 1% of the time; instead one of the elite factions not aligned with public opinion usually carries the day.
People's opinions are highly correlated with elite opinions, of course (because elites control what they hear, read, and see, and whether they'll progress in their careers or be employed at all), but when there's a divergence, public opinion is followed 0% of the time.
>I hate to refer you to a search engine, look for any major issue where the population differs in opinion to the donor class.
That's not what I asked. I asked for an issue supported by voters, not population. A lot of people have opinions, but not many people vote, which skews actual legislation. There's also a conservative tilt because rural voters have disproportionate power.
The populist "it's the elite and their money controlling legislation" sentiment doesn't seem to correlate with reality from what I've read.
On healthcare, the support of socialization is complicated. Voters are iffy depending on how questions are phrased, so it's not totally clear on exactly what they want. It seems something like the ACA was pretty close, but even that was very controversial.
For example, I know you can get very high approval for M4A, but if you phrase questions in a more partisan manner, approval tanks. Something along the lines of "Would you support government provided healthcare that would ban private insurance?" would poll terribly, even though they're both referring to the same policy.
Would have allowed for professionals in a given field to be accredited to make investments related to their profession. Or to put it another way, you would no longer need to already be rich to use the tools that the rich use to get richer.
The bill was passed unanimously in the house, and then quietly killed in the senate.
5 years later, we got a neutered version. Now you can make investments if you get a series 7 license, etc. But from what I understand you can’t just take the test and get the license, you need to be sponsored by an institution, but that misses the point of the original bill that represented the actual will of the people.
Do you have data to substantiate a strong majority of support for this bill among voters, and adjusted for voting power? I'd assume a lot of voters would be indifferent to this issue. It seems quite complicated. It seems it's a tradeoff between freedom and saving uniformed people from losing their money.
Are you citing this poll [0] for the healthcare questions because if so, I'm not sure how relevant that is. I'd bet a lot of money those support numbers drop once you throw in the nitty gritty details that actual legislation requires such as how you plan on paying for a X trillion dollar per year spending bill.
> 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.
You could also say that a few very good traders in the senate would greatly benefit from this passing as well. There are a number of reasons this passed.
This is not going to increase skilled labor in a meaningful way so I would not frame it as providing jobs that will get people out of subsidized programs.
Or the tl;dr, there’s always money available for things that directly make money and when it comes to government repayment is in the form of jobs and GDP growth.
“But free school lunches also provide a positive ROI!” I agree with you, now convince your representative of it.
Maybe we need a different spin on it: instead of a positive ROI, free school lunches provide a strong security posture by making stronger and smarter future-soldiers?
A substantial number of those 52 senators oppose free school meals not because they're "too expensive" but because the policy itself (the government giving free food to children) is something they object to on ideological grounds. A much smaller subset of that group also oppose the government giving free stuff to industry, but in either case the cost is not what they're concerned about.
I’ve stopped believing in the ideology of the average legislator. There are some high profile congresspeople or senators who are deeply ideological, and act according to their ideology, but I feel like that is the exception rather then the rule (hence the high profile).
Rather then ideology most legislators rule by the most persuasive lobbying, this includes people and PACs that pay for their very very expensive campaign funds. And in this case semiconductor monopolies simply has a better performing lobbying campaign then social advocacy groups, so the former gets passed but not the latter.
Note. I don’t believe this listing of democracy is unique to the USA. You see it in Europe as well. However USA is especially prone to this because of lax lobbying laws, lax campaign financing laws while also being one of the least represented democracy in the world (even less represented then non-democracies like China).
Unlikely, because many states then cut those assistance programs when given the opportunity. It's more likely that the 'state' argument is a way to achieve their ideological ends (cutting the program.)
That said, this bill is a very positive development. Investing in local manufacturing and R&D is a great idea, and it will help the economy. Hopefully it will efficient and money will not be captured by rent-seekers or cronyism.
Isn't that how it's supposed to work? The state is supposed to pass laws that represent the will of its constituents. If the majority of the people living in the state are opposed to such a program, then they shouldn't have such a program. The scope of the federal government is supposed to be for coordinating cross-state stuff that states alone can't decide for themselves.
> The state is supposed to pass laws that represent the will of its constituents. If the majority of the people living in the state are opposed to such a program, then they shouldn't have such a program.
You're ignoring that gerrymandering districts allow politicians to enact policies that don't reflect the will of the people.
If we wanted local control then local towns/cities and counties would have the most power in our system. Instead things are reversed so smaller units of government have progressively less power.
This makes sense because we want people to freely move around the country without encountering wildly different systems in every small town.
Also, when education funding happens on the county level we end up having wildly different standards of education depending on if your county is where rich people live or not - everyone wants to demand the best for their own children, but I think it's pretty settled that children, who don't have freedom of movement and aren't viewed as fully rationale agents, should have access to good education regardless of who their parents are and where they choose to live.
Differing county education funding was a real and evident problem when I was growing up in Massachuesettes in the 90s - some areas (like Wellesley) had extremely well funded schools due to local taxes while other areas had far too many students for the funds they collected. This, in part, lead to a whole big thing involving student busing[1] which was honestly pretty awful for the students that rode several hours to attend suburban schools - even if they did end up in a better funded district it was a cheap patch that avoided the real issue.
The name of our country is the United States. The state was intended as the primary unit of general government.
Lots of land is outside of cities, and that can't be left ungoverned. And many counties have very few people, which make a lot of government functions impractical or insufficient.
So states are still a reasonable unit after 250 years.
Alternatively the name of our country (well my former country but whatever) is the United States because existing colonial governments held significant power and weren't willing to unite if it meant they could be unseated from their cushy political appointments.
I don't think going by names is the best approach when we've got legal documents and statements to go by which are far less vague.
Thats the abortion ruling in a nutshell - return it to the states and let the voters decide. However at the same time we have rulings saying gun rights are a federal issue and a state cannot regulate how permits are given out the way they want (although there are many nuances there), essentially making it a constitutional issue due to the 2nd amendment.
So in other words if it's the will of the country we need to pass an amendment, and if not then move to a state where your ideals are embraced. I know I've heard this story somewhere before...i think back in 1860's...
> essentially making it a constitutional issue due to the 2nd amendment.
Yes, because that's how the American constitution works. If you think something else should have similar protections - or if you don't like the second amendment and think it should be repealed - lobby for a new amendment.
Until then, it's the highest law in the land and is on equal footing with any constitutional protection, regardless of your personal policy preferences.
Oh to live in such a world... Unfortunately the Supreme Court is not a compiler that returns rulings from some objective process. The justices have massive leeway to decide how to interpret every part of the constitution, and they do so to align their rulings with their own personal and political goals. If we swapped this court with 9 other judges they would return very different rulings on the exact same cases.
In this instance though, the majority's 'political goals' are textualism and originalism- where the intent of the written words is paramount. This at least has the virtue of limiting the power of their unelected personal policy outcomes- which we see much more often with the putative conservatives voting with the liberals against their presumed personal opinions on what they'd like the outcome to be.
You see that quite often from Gorsuch and Alito- you'll not once see that from Sotomayor.
Thomas is consistent, though conveniently for him his policy and political preference's and how he reads the Constitution seem to align nearly perfectly.
Gorsuch I'll give you as, while intensely conservative, probably pretty honest about it, but Alito is a whole-cloth mythmaker on his own in the vein of a Scalia. He's about as much of a "textualist" as Thomas is, and both will search for any wild port in a storm (see Dobbs itself for plenty of them) to get to the point he wanted to get to.
How big of a majority needs to decide that the federal government should be what they want and not what you think it is supposed to be before it can change?
States Government don't have the taxing power of the Federal Government.
The only way to solve this equation is to drop Federal Government taxing power to as close to zero as possible and zero may not be enough as states power is likely to drop.
If economics was a harder science, it would be about mathematically proofs of these possibilities.
I'm all for free public education for poor kids. Is it really necessary to give free public education to all Palo Alto kids independent of financial status?
Snark aside, the answer is: it's much simpler to manage a program that offers the same thing to everyone regardless of income than it is to manage a program that has to work out who deserves it. And offering it to all avoids stigma.
Why would a human being feel that feeding children is NOT their responsibility?
Clearly you have never had to be the "free lunch kid", or idealize your childhood independent of the cruelty of "different". You are extremely privileged.
The idea that we'd limit what kids we fund for meals, education, etc. is just gross and bifurcates any moralistic or democratic ideals.
The US has a serious problem with "bootstraps" and whatnot. Which really means, survival of the sh1tt1est.
If you feel that investing in the future of your community is BS, stop living in a community.
You don't have kids? Cool!
Meanwhile, you don't feel like you need to contribute to the future you wish you had secured for yourself without struggle? F*ck you. Your community is an investment in the continued existence of a people with similar DNA as yourself.
It is beyond my understanding to fathom how in 2022 we're all still trying to deal with false scarcity as some sort of reality.
There is MORE than enough for everyone, but we don't really care about that beyond a family or clan directive. That's a shame for any culture.
I was at the house of the owner of a company I worked for. I mentioned my amusement at seeing a school bus in this very rural area on the way to his house. He complained that he didn’t have kids so he didn’t see why he should have to pay for that. I replied that, as my employer, he was benefiting from my public school education. That ended that conversation.
It’s not defunding education. It’s saying rather than waste money on something unnecessary over here (like free lunches for the wealthy) let’s spend it on something better (like teacher salaries).
If you have a progressive tax system, excess government aid used by wealthy families is more than made up for by the higher tax rates those families pay. In exchange, you end up with programs that are simpler to operate, have less red tape, and have a broader base of political support.
Let’s say there is a 22 to 1 student to teacher ratio. And 20 don’t need the free lunch but you give it to them anyways. Let’s say you’re spending $5 per meal per kid. That’s $100/day. 180 days per school year. $18k per class.
It could be higher, it could be lower. Certainly it’s enough to be out to good use.
The additional subsidy for free lunches in the US currently is closer to $3.60, and you are massively overestimating how many additional free lunches would be consumed. The majority of school lunches consumed are already free. In 2019[1], 20.1 million free lunches were served compared to 7.7 million full price (and 1.7 million reduced price). And even the "full price" lunches are partially subsidized. So even assuming that all of the students in that class are eating school lunches (they aren't; only about 60% of kids do), the difference is more like 5-6 "unnecessary" lunches, not 20. The real number would likely be significantly lower than that.
“Free lunch” isn’t free if one pays enough tax to cover its cost and other free things that they receive. Given there’s already progressive taxes, what’s the benefit of having income threshold for free lunch programs (or similar assistance programs)?
Universal “free lunch” is cheaper to manage, avoids filtering out children who needs it (but is filtered out due to administrative error or rigid rules), prevents children’s embarrassment, etc.
It's not about the kid in Palo Alto who doesn't need it, but gets it anyway.
It's about the kid who lives in poverty and should get it, but doesn't, because their family didn't properly submit forms A65, B39, and F12 proving their annual income meets the ever-changing requirements.
Giving a benefit to everyone is by far the simplest and most effective way to be sure no one falls through the bureaucratic cracks (though it's probably more accurate to call them gaping chasms than 'cracks').
You’re suggesting that buying free lunches for the 92% of students who don’t need it [0] is more efficient than just paying teachers more or hiring more intervention specialists or counselors?
Many parents who can afford things still don't pay for them for their kids. Not sure why nobody thinks of those kids, there ought to be millions of them...
You think there are millions of US American school-age children whose parents voluntarily undernourish them? Out of 73 million children under 18 in the US, that's at least several percent. Do you have a citation?
>>Also, giving every kid the same treatment is a good idea in general as it reinforces the idea that they should be treated equally.
Actually what it does is teach kids they should depend on the government for handouts - even if there families can easily afford to pay their own way. Not a message I would choose to send.
I keep asking the same thing about why it's necessary for malloc to give so much memory to Electron, but they are way less friendly on the glibc mailing list to that argument for some reason.
Most likely only those who need it will take it, and making it available to everyone makes it simpler to manage.
I went to a public school in Uruguay and we had a daily free meal (not really lunch, it was more of a snack, school ran 13 to 17 for me) and I never went to get mine, but I always had a couple of classmates who didn't get a square lunch at home and they went to get that.
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 home cooked food against microwaved pizza and crackers, for a six year old, it’s no contest.
I’m still supportive of the program - if there are starving kids in our community, of course having free options is great, I just wish they’d managed to have a cook onsite so it wouldn’t be so factory-made and artificial.
There's an added cost if you want to sort through which kids qualify and which kids don't. Trying to filter kids out also reduces the program's reach for kids which do qualify for various reasons.
>And then the government gets to decide what the lunches are for everyone.
Well, no. You always have the option to bring your lunch if you can afford it. So the government gets to decide what the lunches are for poor people who don't have another option. Take that for what it is, but shit lunch is better than no lunch, ask any hungry person.
Necessary is a bad way to evaluate because it often devolves into whether or not it is "absolutely necessary". Of course the answer is often times no.
Rather than embrace minimalism, the better question is if it is more efficient to run the program that way and often times, universal programs are indeed more efficient.
In the US, a lot of the time support for one program or another is given not on the basis of ideology, but rather on the basis of whether or not the beneficiaries of a program provided commensurate, um, "campaign contributions".
Pretty sure impoverished school kids contribute pretty much zero to political campaigns.
Increasingly campaigns are funded almost entirely by small dollar donations raised through social media. This is about to make US politics really weird, and I'm not sure what to think of it.
Also basically all legislation that passes which is very little, is written by the staffers of House and Senate leadership without going through committee. It's then handed to members to rubber stamp on the floor if the votes are already secured. Buying some random senator or rep is basically worthless these days unless they hold swing vote and can't be primaried for some reason.
Sure, but most of that stuff doesn't make it into law at the federal level. State houses are a different story. Congress really doesn't pass a lot of legislation anymore.
> It would be nice if all campaigns were funded by small donations
If you go look at the videos congress people are putting up to pull in donations, you may not have such a rosy view. It tends to be the most divisive stuff, and really leans into fear of the other in general. It seems unhealthy to me.
It's not that crazy if you think about the fact that most senators never went to public schools, are from wealthy families, went ivy league, mostly hang around other wealthy people.
Completely out of touch is probably the right mental framework.
> It should be noted that the US decided not to extend the universal free school meals program, because it was "too expensive" at $11B.
Tragic, yes, but note that you can’t compare the price tags directly on bills like this because the headline number tends to be a mix of tax breaks combined with spending authorization stretch out over many years.
For example, $100 billion of the bill goes to domestic funding scientific research and fostering technology hubs. It’s spread out over 5 years.
I need to read the fine print of how this is all spread out, but it’s incorrect to read the headline and assume that chipmakers are getting $280B of checks next year.
For comparison, a bill authorizing the domestic lunch program over a similar 5 year term would likely be said to cost $65-70 billion due to the 5-year term and the inevitable rising prices over that term. (Note I’m not making any moral judgments about this, just putting it in context. I also didn’t verify any cost numbers from the parent comment, so don’t take my example as a fact)
> Semiconductor manufacturing is of military and geopolitical significance so it makes a lot of sense that the government is willing to spend big here.
You expounded on the value of semiconductors but you didn't on the value of feeding children that would go hungry otherwise.
This is why saying
> This is a shallow analysis.
rings hollow.
The value of feeding the next generation of Americans and ensuring they do not go hungry should be just as much a matter of national security as semiconductors. It's not because the poor are viewed as expendable.
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 their funding or powers on schools. I want the federal government focused on federal issues.
It seems quite reasonable that schools should serve the local community and be largely funded and ran by locals.
did you read the definition of the very lowest tier of "very low food security" metric?
It's hilarious, 100 years ago people would laugh at such "hardships". Food availability isn't a problem in the U.S. for all but the extreme outliers. Now, education about nutrition is very likely a problem, but even the poorest of the poor can readily get the nutrition they need if they knew what they needed, but obviously even our rich don't understand nutrition.
The harshest measurement on the chart was someone who didn't eat for a full day over a 3 month period. I fast for many days at a time _because_ it's healthy. Our ancestors did not eat three meals a day and as a result our bodies are extremely adept at having irregular eating schedules.
We have an obesity epidemic in our poorest demographic. That says about everything that needs to be said, if you ask me.
> It's hilarious, 100 years ago people would laugh at such "hardships".
The metrics people used 100 years ago are of no concern to me and indeed the values those people held are more often than not abhorrent.
> Food availability isn't a problem in the U.S. for all but the extreme outliers.
When faced with data, you persist in this lie.
> Now, education about nutrition is very likely a problem, but even the poorest of the poor can readily get the nutrition they need if they knew what they needed
False, food deserts coupled with the fact that the more nutritious foods are much more expensive make it extremely difficult to do so.
> I fast for many days at a time _because_ it's healthy.
That's easy af to do when it's voluntary.
> We have an obesity epidemic in our poorest demographic. That says about everything that needs to be said, if you ask me.
This tells me that you've never been poor. One of the reasons people are obese is because all they can afford is the worst foods.
> One of the reasons people are obese is because all they can afford is the worst foods.
Obesity is caused exclusively by calorie surplus. You can literally eat pure sugar, twinkies, and sugary beverages exclusively at base metabolism maintenance calories and never become obese.
As for your ignorant assumptions, I've been homeless for short periods of time in my life (in between jobs moving to a different city) and lived far below the poverty line for like 8 years of my adult life. Frankly, you have no idea what you're talking about. You can eat far healthier than the average american on the lowest budgets in the US. At literally half the poverty line if you spend 30% of your budget on food that's $5 a day on food - now you've probably never been poor so you don't understand how far $5 can take you in america - here's a nice showcase of what you can eat for $3.33/day
> You can literally eat pure sugar, twinkies, and sugary beverages exclusively at base metabolism maintenance calories and never become obese.
You changed your argument from nutrition to calories.
> As for your ignorant assumptions, I've been homeless for short periods of time in my life (in between jobs moving to a different city) and lived far below the poverty line for like 8 years of my adult life.
As for your ignorant assumptions,
> Frankly, you have no idea what you're talking about. You can eat far healthier than the average american on the lowest budgets in the US. At literally half the poverty line if you spend 30% of your budget on food that's $5 a day on food - now you've probably never been poor so you don't understand how far $5 can take you in america - here's a nice showcase of what you can eat for $3.33/day
None of this would be true in a place like California, especially if you live in a food desert.
> So again, you've got no idea what you're talking about
So again, you've got no idea what you're talking about
> I could do this all day, honestly as it's not even remotely hard to eat very healthy and very well on $5/day
well you can choose to remain ignorant if you want, the second link I provided was based off prices in california...not just california, but berkley - which is right next to the most expensive grocery city in california (oakland)
Not to mention I'm being extremely generous by using a salary that is 50% of the poverty line on top of only utilizing 30% of that for food and on top of that building meals that provide more nutrition than the average wealthy american gets by far.
but you've since left the domain of attempting reason, but I'm hoping that's just because you have too much ego on the internet but can still absorb information and utilize it later.
> well you can choose to remain ignorant if you want, the second link I provided was based off prices in california...not just california, but berkley - which is right next to the most expensive grocery city in california (oakland)
You don't even fully read the links you provide.
> Cost estimates based on Safeway and Berkeley Bowl prices advertised in January 2013.
> Note that costs are for portions used in the menu; your up-front cost will be higher if you purchase all items on the list as packaged.
Furthermore, this is only for one person. This menu doesn't work for little kids because they need formula. It doesn't work for teenagers because they're ravenous eating machines. And if they're particularly active kids, then this doesn't even meet the caloric needs.
This menu is for an adult that is relatively sedentary. If you're talking about working class people that do manual labor, this is completely inadequate.
> but you've since left the domain of attempting reason, but I'm hoping that's just because you have too much ego on the internet but can still absorb information and utilize it later.
> It's hilarious, 100 years ago people would laugh at such "hardships"
And a 100 years ago a lobotomy against "mental illness" (like mood swings or chatty women) was considered acceptable. A high school diploma was an amazing achievement. What's your point and how does that relate to today?
if you read the rest of my comment I'm sure you'll find a point in there. Picking out a single comment you don't like and ignoring the context of the debate adds nothing to the conversation. I'm not about to debate the merits of diet 100 years ago vs today in a thread about whether or not people in the US can or can't get access to adequate nutrition.
> 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.
Do you think areas that want to put more into education should be punished while areas that care very little to invest in education get equal funding?
If an area does well to foster profitable trade and wishes to utilize that profit to boost education, I feel like that's a good thing and ideally would result in massive migration to that area. Especially with utilities of the internet that make it not only possible, but very much in practice to share teaching for free from the best educators.
If you force every kid to be equally educated, I worry you'll end up with a bunch of highly capable kids getting bored (because they're getting the same education as the rest of the kids who don't care) while forcing kids who don't care to painfully spend their entire youth on a useless education that they don't see value in.
Sure, we all want disadvantaged people to have better opportunities but if we're forcing them to have better opportunities it seems unlikely to instill the most important aspect of those opportunities, which is that the people utilizing them actually want them.
Difficult problems, for sure, but I struggle looking at todays kids attitude towards school and seeing how this is the best path forward. Even as recent as just a few generations ago you hear stories about kids giving up a lot in order to be educated. I imagine classrooms full of only eager students would have its benefits, and maybe those would vastly outweigh the detriments.
If you've ever had to jump through the hoops of these programs like my parents had to, you would know that simply being eligible does not mean that you'll actually gain access to the program nor are you actually eligible if you're poor.
The income requirements often times are far too high especially if you're in gentrifying areas due to cost of living.
The next generation of Americans will grow up hungry if we cede the security of the very item at the heart of all of our infrastructure. The next generation won't have any equivalent electronic equipment from the post-WWII era, whilst living in a world that is based exclusively on semiconductors (consider the usage of semiconductors in medical equipment as well). This is certain death, and this kind of short-sighted belly aching is a problematic position to take when we're staring down the prospect of losing the entirety of our ability to sustain the infrastructure needed to keep anyone alive in the first place.
I agree here, and I think a good way to think of it is not as government handouts but government incentives. $x for chips in USA incentivizes industry to move to USA which creates jobs and reduces a dependency on external companies. $y for feeding poor school children incentivizes what exactly?
They only killed universal free lunch, not the means tested part. Poorer kids are still getting free lunches and now the richer families have to pay for school lunches. They ended welfare for the wealthy.
I went to a public elementary school in New York state in the early 2000s, and only kids who needed free or reduced school lunch prices got it. The rest of us paid $1.75.
Keep in mind that this isn't just a handout to business, but also a national security issue. Having 90% of our chips made in Taiwan means we have to spend a bunch of resources protecting Taiwan.
The long term plan here is to bring this manufacturing back into the US so that we don't have to protect Taiwan anymore.
(Please note I'm not stating my opinion on if this is good or bad, simply stating the end game they are going for).
It is despicable that we don't do enough for the poor, but the government can do two things at once. It does not need to be either or.
For the US this is a chip manufacturing is a key strategic asset. South Korea, China, and Taiwan governments are essentially funding their chip manufacturing. It is not a fair playing field. The fact that they are only spending $52B on grants and incentives out of $280B is actually too little. South Korea is spending $450B for local chip manufacturing over 10 years and that started last year.
While South Korea is throwing out giant numbers, the number of South Korean and Taiwanese companies who are announcing plants contingent on the CHIPS Act recently makes it seem like what the US is doing is very favorable (these companies have announced plans of SK Group $22b, Samsung $200b, Globalwafers $5b).
Schools meals are pure cost, they don't bring anything back. It's not like we have mass starvation going on at the moment either.
Also, why "free meals" when parents can afford to pay for it? If you have parents who are under a certain threshold of revenues, give their kids free meals, but let's not do a one-size fits all policy, this is not 1950 anymore.
> Schools meals are pure cost, they don't bring anything back. It's not like we have mass starvation going on at the moment either.
They are not a pure cost, they are an investment in your next generation of humans (or human resources if you are that way inclined). Poor nutrition leads to worse academic and social outcomes which limits opportunities for poorer kids. Good food can boost their quality of life, health and ability to contribute to the world.
> Also, why "free meals" when parents can afford to pay for it? If you have parents who are under a certain threshold of revenues, give their kids free meals, but let's not do a one-size fits all policy, this is not 1950 anymore.
Every time you add a condition to a benefit like this, you have to create a whole government department around it. Many salaries, managers, cost of equipment and rent and energy. All to go through and classify each person against the threshold, then build reporting to find those who don't qualify, communicate this to them (so a helpdesk and appeal system needs to be created), an enforcement system, a penalty system, long waits for support or decisions, having to update your financial status if it changes etc. All of this wasteful bureaucracy just to be stingy towards kids.
> Poor nutrition leads to worse academic and social outcomes which limits opportunities for poorer kids. Good food can boost their quality of life, health and ability to contribute to the world.
I don't buy it. People were given poor quality food right after WW2 pretty much everywhere and still had productive and fulfilling lives no matter what - they actually invented the world we currently live in. Nutrition science is also junk (look at the ever-changing recommendations from nutritionists on what should be given to people, it's a running joke at this stage since they keep contradicting what they were recommending before).
> Every time you add a condition to a benefit like this, you have to create a whole government department around it.
With digital reporting and tracking for everything the cost of customized tax-breaks or subsidies is going down year after year. And many other countries are already doing that (condition-based benefits), so not sure what the big problem is to do in the US as well. Unless there is rampant incompetence at play in the administration, which is another problem altogether.
And usually its on the basis that 10 people may commit fraud to take advantage of of a benefit. Corporations would never take advantage of these types of agreements. /s
While this still may be a good idea to help get more semiconductor production in the US and could reduce ongoing inflation by increasing supply it doesn't mean we shouldn't invest in people as well including plans for school meals. I think we are still figuring out how much of the inflation is supply related and how much is because the cost of money has been too cheap.
In the US, there is basically one party - the business party. It has two factions, called Democrats and Republicans, which are somewhat different but carry out variations on the same policies.
> But $50B to large monopolistic companies isn't "too expensive," and we can afford that.
The US cannot afford losing its technological edge. It is an issue of national security. CHIPS is quite a modest bill compared to foreign competitors such as the South Korean $450Bn bill[1]. And that's not even going into how much subsidies China is pumping into their fabs.
Your points are very good, I would have said the same thing.
The cynic in me thinks it is not just the Senate. How much money has House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s family invested in US chip makers in the last few months? Quite a lot of money…
I remember when the US government stopped the $50 million/year breakfast for poor kids program - too much money. That is when we were attacking Iraq, and spending $50M every 20 minutes of so in order to pump money into political donors like the ‘defense’ industry and energy industries.
Off topic, but I laugh when I hear democrats or republicans talk like their political party cares for them. Absurd. The DNC and RNC are themselves profit driven entities.
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 there is no easy way to compare the two.
The environment is what allows everything else to exist. By your logic, that should be the #1 spending priority. And that’s only the lowest hanging of the rotten fruit of this argument.
A country that can't defend itself will be pray to everybody else and will not be able to do anything about environment or education.
You can bitch and moan all you want. Go visit Ukraine and see what happens when you live in a country that can't defend itself. Everything else is being put to side. Do you think they are discussing how much they should be spending to help with the effort to control global warming?
The simple fact is that having US reliant on chips supplied by a hostile power will eventually be US downfall.
Your position is incredibly simplistic - and your response has nothing to do with my comment. That the environment underlies civilisation is a simple fact. Degraded environment, no food. No food, no people. No people, no military.
But the invasion of Ukraine most likely has a lot to do with Russia gaining control over the supply of fossil fuels to Europe and the world. So even at a very high level, the things you say are far from cut and dried. Had Europe moved more resolutely towards energy independence then things might have been different.
Military security is only one kind of security. Military spending is only one way to create security. Most of the wars of the last 100 years have been about energy. And I suspect that most militaries exist primarily to perpetuate themselves.
> 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 control, and the logistics to feed them all rule out pretty much any Earthly military power.
Nuke? Missile strikes? Naval blockade? All plausible, if difficult.
But an actual boots on the ground invasion? Impossible.
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.
The military is full of young people who grew up in poverty. It might be good for national security if more of them didn't have nutritional deficiencies. They aren't separate issues.
Nobody changes it because they know they are going to need it when they are the minority. Someone is gonna have to take one for the team and pull the plug on it, but I have little faith in our government ever doing the “principled” thing.
In 2013, Senator Harry Reid did it for federal judges (and not supreme court judges). At the time, McConnell told them that if they killed the filibuster for federal judges, he would kill it for supreme court justices. In 2017, he followed through on his promise, the orange fool appointed 3 justices, and now Roe v. Wade has been overturned.
It would not be crazy to link the overturning of Roe to the 2013 decision of Harry Reid to invoke the "nuclear option." It appears to have led to an era of unprecedented judicial activism.
I doubt that getting a few extra progressive federal judicial nominees through was worth those supreme court seats. For now, it seems that enough of the Senate has learned their lesson about removing the filibuster.
You're missing a piece of the puzzle actually - this goes back to George Walker Bush's presidency.
Democrats were being extremely obstructionist in GWB's federal judges. Republicans were considering throwing out the filibuster in response. Moderates from both parties got together and convinced their respective sides to back down and let judges get through while maintaining the filibuster.
In 2013, the tactic was pulled out by Republicans, and the Democrats used the - given the history of this tactic - unsurprising response after some time. Which, of course, led to 2017.
It would be absolutely insane to link overturning Roe to Reid's decision. Everyone already knew McConnell would have gotten rid of it anyway the second a supreme court justice was fillibustered. Look at his actions in the Garland and Barrett nominations, compared to that getting rid of the fillibuster for judges is peanuts.
The only mistake Reid made was not to do away with the fillibuster fully
It wasn’t the same situation because there wasnt a court majority at stake. Unless not voting on the Supreme Court nominee’s of Obama was also because of Reid’s actions?
The filibuster isn’t even dead. Senators can still get up there and talk for as long as they want (aka what the filibustering actually is). The current filibuster rule is basically a senator just saying “yeah I want to filibuster this” and for some reason everyone just goes along with it.
this isn't quite accurate. The modern filibuster is basically a move to table discussions, and it takes 60 senators to overcome that delay and continue to a vote. The problem is the onus is on the 60 senators who want to pass it, and not the 40 senators who want to delay voting.
In this way it's stupidly easy to block any legislation by telling the other side "I'm gonna filibuster this." and if they want to pass it they need to pull the ~10+ votes and make it bipartisan. This is a lot of work so they normally don't even try.
>In 2013, Senator Harry Reid did it for federal judges (and not supreme court judges).
Yes, it was an extremely aggressive and short sighted thing for him to do. Most people don't know this story though, so it seems the Democratic Party gets a pass.
Here's McConnell lambasting Reid about it in 2013.
>It appears to have led to an era of unprecedented judicial activism.
Judicial activism is a judicial philosophy holding that the courts can and should go beyond the applicable law to consider broader societal implications of its decisions.
Based on recent decisions, we seem to be currently in an era of judicial restraint, not activism. Again, the SCOTUS doesn't create laws, congress does. That's the way the system was designed. I hope the Citizens United decision will get overturned.
But there is likewise nothing preventing court packing right now except the concern of some democrats right? They could assign 8 more, then next time there is a swap the gop would add 16 etc. You have to go exponential by nature of the vote to account for deaths. So in as little as 116 years the whole population might be on the bench! I don't like that the macro level policy of our nation is getting decided based on rules of order and who is willing to change them. I'm not a historian, but it seems like the filibuster was already a hack around intended operation of the legislature. Time limiting it would still serve the purpose of preventing the minority from getting shut down with no chance to speak, but also prevent its abuse to require 60 votes on absolutely everything.
>But there is likewise nothing preventing court packing right now except the concern of some democrats right?
Right. FDR threatened this during his administration and bullied the SCOTUS into deciding his way. He was quite Machiavellian. For me, doing something like this would neuter one of the tiers of the check and balance system.
>I'm not a historian, but it seems like the filibuster was already a hack around intended operation of the legislature.
Yes, but it's procedure that the senate had agreed on for quite some time. There's nothing in the constitution that says how many votes are needed to pass, the senate decides that, and for most things, it's 60.
>require 60 votes on absolutely everything.
Depends on how you look at it. Do you want a political party to make laws of the land with only 25+ states supporting it? It sounds good when it's something you support, but doesn't sound great when it isn't. The idea of the 60 vote rule is the federal government can't enact legislation that a supermajority of the country isn't in favor of. Regardless of your party affiliation, you can imagine what horrible legislation would be passed if the opposing party was allowed to pass anything with just 50+1 votes in the senate.
No it was a wise and practical decision. And the fillibuster has always been a stupid accident of the rules. It delayed civil rights bills by over a decade
Everyone knew that McConnell was lying and would have overturned the fillibuster on judges the second a supreme court fillibuster started. And we would have gotten the same extremist supreme court that laughs at restaint and takes away fundamental rights
Apparently he had the option to do it under Bush when Democrats were obstructing Bush's nominees to the federal courts, and he chose not to, so the evidence suggests that he would not have just removed the filibuster for the fun of it.
The Democrats could have been smarter tactically. Trump’s first SC nominee was Gorsuch, certainly conservative but a stellar jurist, and an uncharacteristically good pick from Trump (compare to the other names on his 2016 shortlist). The Democrats had no cards besides obstruction, which would certainly lead McConnell to kill the filibuster. If they had made the reasonable guess that Trump’s next pick would be easier to beat, saved their powder, and reluctantly let Gorsuch through, McConnell would have had to kill the filibuster for Kavanaugh. For Kavanaugh, a far more controversial pick than Gorsuch, he wouldn’t have had the votes.
Well the Democrats just lost all chance of any new gun control and will probably have some gun control repealed. Not only that, they lost the power of Democrat controlled states to enact gun control at the state level and will have much of state gun control repealed. They completely lost the right to abortion at the federal/constitutional level as well. What did they gain for that immense cost? Some federal judges back in 2013. If you think that was wise and in no way short sighted, I really don't know what to say.
The GOP in two years from now if they control Congress will ignore the filibuster and pass a national abortion ban at the federal level at the first opportunity. Anyone believing these folks haven't been lying or won't be complete hypocrites by now are living in an alternate reality.
You literally don't know that though. All signs point to them not doing that, because allowing abortions is actually popular. The only people telling you that Republicans will do that are Democrats. Also, even if they take a majority, they won't have a veto-proof majority, so there is no reason to go nuclear in the Senate when Biden is going to veto everything they do.
If they cared about popular will, almost every GOP controlled state in the USA wouldn't be as we speak trying to implement the most extreme abortion bans they can.
Popular will doesn't matter when you don't need to listen to popular will to keep power. If your insane, extreme base is all you have to pander to to keep power, the GOP is doing just that.
History won't look fondly on us for the absolute laughingstock of a policy it is at the highest levels of power. "Look even back in 2025, people were a bunch of monkeys with nuclear weapons. Look how they would decide on policy."
> Paul Pelosi purchased on June 17, 20,000 shares of Nvidia, a top semiconductor company, worth between $1 million and $5 million, the Daily Caller reported, citing disclosure reports filed by the House speaker.
He bought the options back in summer of 2021. He decided to exercise them rather than let them expire worthless. His price was probably around 180/share.
>In a periodic transaction report, the senior Democrat disclosed that her husband, financier Paul Pelosi, sold 25,000 shares of Nvidia for about $4.1 million, ending up with a loss of $341,365.
That makes no difference, he could have sold the options for their intrinsic value on expiration (Friday June 17) he doesn’t have to let them expire worthless. Instead he exercised them, committing $4m in capital prior to the bill passing and made $20 per share
>In a periodic transaction report, the senior Democrat disclosed that her husband, financier Paul Pelosi, sold 25,000 shares of Nvidia for about $4.1 million, ending up with a loss of $341,365.
He bought options in July 2021. Basically, he said he'd buy 20k shares stock for X price regardless of the price in the next year. If the stock goes up he can sell the options without having to buy said stock (for a profit). He can also give up what he paid for the options and choose not to buy the shares and they'd expire worthless.
As the stock was below what he bet it would be within a years time he decided to exercise his right to buy the 20k shares rather than lose his initial investment. He then sold, for a loss, but possibly a smaller one than if he just let them expire worthless.
Nvidia isn’t getting shit from this bill. It’s basically all going to intel with global foundries and other boutique fabs fighting for the scraps TSMC and Samsung leave behind.
Banning Proof of Work cryptocurrencies from being traded on licensed exchanges would achieve the same improvement of chip availability, as well as saving a huge amount of electricity, for $0.
I guess sensible measures like this don't boost the share portfolios of politicians' spouses though.
"Sensible measures" like that don't get picked because ultimately all cryptocurrency is a zero-sum game, and getting rid of all of them would save us a lot of time, manhours and wasted Internet conversations. But ideas like that are too sensible, so we give people the freedom to build whatever blockchain-garbage they want, because that's their sovereign choice.
No, it should be pretty easy to effectively end them. Just make it illegal to possess, buy, or sell them and suddenly all the corporate interest vanishes, the exchanges disappear, and all the crypto bros quiet down.
Sure, some people would still use them but it'd be a rounding error compared to current adoption.
>Just make it illegal to possess, buy, or sell them
How do you enforce that? This would just drive everyone to KYC-less exchanges.
>corporate interest vanishes
I welcome the abolishment of corporate investment. This wave of corporate dollars have only served to distract, hijack, and pevert the true purpose of cryptocurrency.
>the exchanges disappear
The exchanges disappear? It seems like it would be pretty simple to set up an exchange as an onion service.
So long as there is a easy route to a single cryptocurrency (be it PoS or otherwise) then there is an easy route to any other cryptocurrency via Crypto-to-Crypto pr P2P exchanges.
>Sure, some people would still use them but it'd be a rounding error compared to current adoption.
Rounding error? I think you'll find that we're actually the majority, despite what the mob of custodial money-chasers would have impressed upon you.
Besides, those investors are bound to leave after they lose enough money on the shell game. It's inevitable.
You'd barely need to. Stores aren't going to accept crypto if it's illegal, Visa's not going to keep issuing their crypto cards, Robinhood isn't going to let people buy and sell. All the means by which the vast majority of people who have or use btc use it would go away.
> It seems like it would be pretty simple to set up an exchange as an onion service.
Pick ten people off the street. How many do you think know what that means? If you guessed more than 0, you're living in a bubble.
