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Comment by barbacoa | Hacker News Reader

I see a lot of people in this thread who don't really know much about Samsung's semiconductor presence in the USA. This expansion has been in the works for years. Samsung has a 100k wafer per month fab in austin texas. They are negotiating for tax abatements for expansion and using alternative sites as leverage.

They are not building a new fab they are expanding their S2 fab in austin texas. There was a permit application that was released a few years back that shows the true scale of their expansion plans.

https://www.swf.usace.army.mil/Portals/47/docs/regulatory/pu...

If this goes through it could made Samsung's S2 fab larger than even TSMC's monster gigafabs.

View on HN

If anyone has seen the Austin S2 campus before, you'd know that it has a massive blacktop to provide parking for its thousands of personnel.

It would be nice if as part of the conditions for application approval, Samsung were asked to commit to erect awnings for solar collectors integrated into covered parking and strongly encouraged to invest in making solar more cost effective.

As a side note. SAS recently bought 100s of acres around their property probably to expand parking.

Sorry for the ignorance, but what's SAS? DDGing that word might not get the appropriate result.

assuming SAS software, an analytics software company

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SAS_Institute

Thank you! It says it's the largest privately held software business. Why is it that it doesn't go public?

Why go public if you already have money?

Why _should_ they go public?

I once visited the SAS campus in North Carolina, when I was working for another well-known North Carolina headquartered software company. Very nice place. Made me quite jealous.

Samsung austin semiconductor (the name of the fab)

Idk why I see downvotes here for a legit comment and concern. Parking lots are absolutely awful.

First, cars. Enough said.

Second, they take up a lot of space with low utilization.

Third, heat.

> Idk why I see downvotes here

discussion derailment

turning every thread into a debate about your pet sociopolitical issue is unhelpful.

>First, cars. Enough said.

No not really. Cars are wonderful, not everyone who lives on this planet wants to share space with strangers.

Cars are wonderful and useful when moving, less so, when stationary. Allowing a second way to use the area taken by the cars is reasonable — a car parking does not need access to the sky, until we have the fabled flying cars.

Nobody said cars have no benefits. But they do have very real drawbacks that are obvious at this point, they just aren't borne by the owner exclusively.

Cars as the exist today for the most part are the best method we have for increasing mobility and economic independence for those that don't live near or can't leverage public transportation (and sometimes in those cases too). They are still objectively awful in many other aspects though.

Not everyone wants to pay taxes either, but sometimes sacrifices will need to be made so that we don't ruin this planet. Sure having personal space and full autonomy in movement is nice, but it may have to be realized in different ways as we start to see the damage we are doing to this planet.

A planet with only mass transit is not a planet I want to live on. Many will fight you to the bitter end on this.

I think the crux of the argument here is that we will not have a planet to live on anymore.

> A planet with only mass transit is not a planet I want to live on

Pitiful strawman. I've never heard someone argue to have "only mass transit". More focus on common transports, cycling cities? Yes, please.

Of course, many like you will still fight it "to the bitter end", whatever that means.

Most people lived and died within 20 miles of where they were born until extremely recently. In that context, this sort of idea is kind of amusing given we have many different parameters (such as the viability of life on earth) to consider in solving social problems.

Let’s follow the science.

Cruise ships pollute more than cars. But you won’t see any green politician discuss that. Why?

https://www.thedrive.com/news/28469/carnival-cruise-ship-fle...

Because cruise ships do their polluting primarily in international waters and are registered under flags of convenience. They have separate fuel tanks for in western countries' jurisdictions to fulfill the regulations that these green politicians have already passed.

This sort of non-compliance compliance infuriates me. Any ships with dual tanks should be banned from western waters.

Then they'll invent one with triple tanks ;)

But you won’t see any green politician discuss that

Do you live in a city that gets a lot of cruise ship traffic? Because in my experience a lot of green politicians are very keen on banning cruise ships.

Source?

That article says nothing about CO2, which is by far the biggest man-made contributor to global warming (and probably what the person above you was referring to)

> Cruise ships pollute more than cars

Sulfur oxides (SOx), yes. Carbon dioxide (CO2), no.

I recall during hurricane Harvey in 2017, the news reported that part of the reason for the innundation was due to so much green space and dirt being covered up by impermeable artificial surfaces, which caused the water to have no where to go except to accumulate and flow into the city.

If you choose to live in an over crowded area like a Coastal City, this is true. Texas is huge with a lot of space; so while yes, gas powered vehicles might not great, consider for a second there a much larger world than the small bubble you live in.

If the long-term return from solar cells were higher than the cost involved, Samsung would do it themselves. Since they don't do it, that means it is not efficient enough. So why force them?

There are plenty of requirements in Conditional Use Permits that force entities to do things they wouldn't otherwise do themselves. These are generally to mitigate the negative impacts on others. For example, onsite stormwater retention and traffic mitigation.

> Since they don't do it, that means it is not efficient enough.

This assumes perfect market efficiency -- that everyone has perfect information and is perfectly rational. In my experience, that isn't the case.

Additionally, Samsung is asking for a 25 year property tax waiver. It's a negotiation.

> There are plenty of requirements in Conditional Use Permits that force entities to do things they wouldn't otherwise do themselves.

Ah, let's remove those requirements.

> For example, onsite stormwater retention and traffic mitigation.

Why do you think "entities" would not do these things without being forced? Do these "entities" not benefit from better traffic and managed stormwater?

> This assumes perfect market efficiency -- that everyone has perfect information and is perfectly rational. In my experience, that isn't the case.

OK, then let's fix that.

> Additionally, Samsung is asking for a 25 year property tax waiver. It's a negotiation.

No, it's not a negotiation. Negotiation can occur between similarly empowered entities. There is no negotiation when one side has the power to lock the other up at gunpoint.

"Why do you think "entities" would not do these things without being forced? Do these "entities" not benefit from better traffic and managed stormwater?"

Before you advocate muh free market, read about history of urban panning - we tried it, most houses didn't even have sewers. I don't want poop on the streets.

More recently in UK over 100 people burned to death because a massive skyscraper was built with violations of fire safety, and then plasteres with more flamable material.

Do these entities not benefit from not having the building they manage burn to the ground?

> I don't want poop on the streets.

I doubt Samsung fab employees are going to do that. I don't get the relevance of this to our discussion.

> More recently in UK over 100 people burned to death because a massive skyscraper was built with violations of fire safety, and then plasteres with more flamable material.

Again, this is irrelevant. A parking lot, just by existing is not a fire risk. And even if it does pose some fire risk, putting solar panels and the required electrical equipment on the parking lot will only increase that risk.

> Do these entities not benefit from not having the building they manage burn to the ground?

No, they don't. Ask the owners of that skyscraper. What's your point again?

Negative externalities should be regulated to some degree. Otherwise we could have a tragedy of the commons situation.

I'm usually in favor of free market-influenced methods such as taxing negative externalities and subsidizing positive ones. So instead of forcing a company to install solar panels, the city could provide a tax incentive for everyone in the city to do so. The overhead of managing that could become large though, so I understand why sometimes more small scale and direct individual negotiations can be good.

>No, it's not a negotiation. Negotiation can occur between similarly empowered entities. There is no negotiation when one side has the power to lock the other up at gunpoint.

They wouldn't say do this or you'll go to jail. They would say do this or we won't give you a giant tax cut. It would be unconstitutional to throw people in one company in jail for something that's fine for others to do.[1]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_of_attainder#Constitution...

> They wouldn't say do this or you'll go to jail. They would say do this or we won't give you a giant tax cut.

"Won't give you a tax cut" translates to "pay us a percentage of your earnings, otherwise we will throw you in jail." So, I'd like to disagree here and say my original assertion was accurate.

> Negative externalities should be regulated to some degree. Otherwise we could have a tragedy of the commons situation.

I am not convinced this applies here. Solar panels over the parking lot sounds like a solution to an invented problem. Parking lots are not harming the environment. If Samsung is paying for the land, they should be able to do whatever they like on that land as long as it doesn't harm someone else.

This sounds like the typical anti-car communist mindset that I've seen many times over here on hn, which I find highly weird. Cars are probably the best innovation humanity has done in the entire history of the species, and I guess people are triggered by that fact?

>"Won't give you a tax cut" translates to "pay us a percentage of your earnings, otherwise we will throw you in jail." So, I'd like to disagree here and say my original assertion was accurate.

Your worst case scenario happens to all companies in the absence of the deal. So your argument seems to be more that taxes themselves are bad rather than the deal is bad.

>I am not convinced this applies here.

Sure, I might agree with you there. I was more replying to the part of your comment about removing all requirements that force companies to do things they wouldn't do themselves.

the urban heat island is real, and austin is hot enough already, so thanks for the very humane suggestion! the screen on my phone used to turn black if i forgot it in my car at work. sometimes i left frozen tamales on my dashboard and came back for them at lunchtime.

in my student coop, i once looked up from my studies to see that my clock/thermometer said it was 110F on my desk. so yeah, if you're going to cut down all the shade, can a bro at least get some awnings?

I have only been to Austin once to consult on an OpenStack install - Cray was in the same building as my client...

But when I was packing for the trip - I was like "I am going to texas - so I don't need a jacket and only packed short sleeve shirts and brought a pair of shorts!

When I arrived in Austin, IT WAS FUCKING SNOWING

I was so damn cold.

Me too! I got stuck there because taxis weren't running to the airport due to snow. Had a rad time... everything was covered in snow, not a car on the road. Apparently the locals hadn't seen anything like it, so maybe a freak one. This was late 2000's, can't remember exactly when

We had a good snow last month - about 6 inches. But yes that kind of thing is so exceedingly rare (about once every 10 years) that the entire city economy basically grinds to a halt so everyone can go outside and play in the snow. The last time that happened was probably the incident you are describing.

Such vast, paved, surface-level parking lots are a distinctively American thing.

In Europe, for example, you’re much more likely to find covered, multi-level parking structures once a parking lot exceeds a given size.

If Europe had the space that exists in and around Austin, they would do the same thing. It's simply far less expensive to build surface lots.

Yes, this is commonly done in areas where land is cheap, I'm thinking of rural train station parking lots, regional and small airport parking lots.

Exactly. It’s not like you see massive flat lots in Manhattan

There is this fairly efficient 10-level parking garage in Philadelphia, Arch Street. It is essentially two 10-floor towers connected at the top. They saved room by making driveways one-way. So you enter, you have to drive 10 floors up, drive across the roof, and then drive 10 floors down to the exit. You can park wherever along the way, but you always end up driving all the way up and down.

That sounds terrible. I feel like I'd get nausea or dizzy. Thats essentially driving in a circle 20 times.

Itd be okay if there were 2 mid level cross connections

The Sydney Opera House is like this too, it's a 12 story double helix excavated from sandstone.

I'm sure it was fascinating to design, but it's an absolute nightmare to park in.

Multilevel parking is about $10-15k per space. An asphalt lot is $1.5k.

You also don't pay land tax and stormwater drainage levies on an undeveloped parking lot.

In Europe, people are more likely to engage in active transportation. You´ll find more public transit, cycling and even walking. Public transit is just a normal way for anybody to get around, not a mobility fallback for poor people.

That is changing though. I've not seen the inside of a train for years and I'm happy with that TBH.

”A developed country is not a place where the poor have cars. It's where the rich use public transportation.”

Gustavo Petro

Personal anecdote is not "change"

Some parking places in Europe are also covered in gravel or permeable pavement and have trees between rows rather than being made of tarmac.

They are trying to strong arm the locals into basically saying they (Samsung) pays zero property taxes to the next 25 years. https://www.statesman.com/story/business/2021/02/04/samsung-... . I hope Austin passes on it if Samsung can't do any better than that.

I hope then you can face the desperate residents who don't have the luxury of having a cushy data collection yuppie job like most of us here do then for missing out on a decent wage like and tell them "no it was for your own good, trust me!"

No it sets a terrible precedent. Businesses need to support their community. I would willing to bet that the city council will not let it happen. They may cut a deal but it ain't gonna be 100%. More like on the order of 10-25% like other companies get. Corporations are too greedy. I contract for a living and through local contacts never go more than a month between contracts. The job market here is still pretty great for people who have solid backend/embedded skills, in general it's solid for most people. Those other people can go work for the other big guys or the new Tesla plant who actually cut a reasonable tax deal.

doesnt samsung create thousands of jobs in the community with this? not sure I share your outrage. this isnt about some one trick pony YC startup hiring a dozen backend devs

Why should labor pay for all the externalities created by capital?

Did you not read the title? It's $17 billion dollar investment creating thousands of high paying jobs which in turn will create more jobs and create more capital in community. Why are you so against this?

This isn't some VC backed zombie healthcare software company hiring a couple of developers per year and not getting to pay taxes. This is a major corporation investing billions with profound impact on the community.

> Why are you so against this?

Why should the people of Austin, Texas gift millions of dollars to a company that made a profit of over $8 billions in the last quarter alone?

I've seen places refuse to budge and lose out the investments

I've also seen Intel refuse to negotiate price for chips with Apple for the original iPhone and look how great that turned out for them and TSMC

The number of cities losing out does not change. If there are X competing cities X-1 cities will always lose out.

This is a company asking a city, that will see no income taxes from the at most 2,000 employees, permission to pay zero taxes at all to the city in exchange for the honor of housing a future EPA Super Fund site. Sure, the city will get some sales tax revenue from the 2,000 who will almost assuredly live outside of the city. So they'll get what, 6.25% of a $10 lunch from maybe 30% of workers per day? So they'll expect about $100k/yr in tax revenue in exchange for more road utilization and a future EPA Super Fund site. That doesn't seem like a good deal for the city. And that's assuming 100% of the sales tax goes to the city which it doesn't. Most of that goes to the county and state.

Why no income taxes on the employees?, they are part of the community, why arent they paying in? How does the city even fund itself then?

Texas does not have an income tax. Texas has property tax and sales tax.

Who said I’m against it? I merely raised the question.

> This is a major corporation investing billions with profound impact on the community.

Sure. Is that impact the same for everyone in the community, though? Or is it ultimately better for some, and not others? Could it also be that it may be a net negative for some members of the community?

Also, as noted by others, Samsung already has strong incentives to build this facility in Texas, and has wanted/needed to build it for a while. This latest gambit is an effort to force local government to sweeten the deal.

The investment is creating the jobs. The tax discount isn't creating jobs. It's just moving them around. Do you really think Samsung will give up if no city gives them a tax break?

without investment there would be no jobs or taxes to collect in the first place. With this single move, texas gov will be able to collect more taxes from thousands of people making 100k+ and downstream suppliers also hiring and making more money.

Samsung can easily find other cities to produce in at lower cost outside America. Why is being competitive for once such a big issue here? Without the tax benefit Texans won't have thousands of high paying high skill jobs.

The tax break adds up to about $40 million a year which pales in comparison to the benefits Texans will receive.

> Samsung can easily find other cities to produce in at lower cost outside America.

No they can't. Austin and the surrounding area are key silicon fabrication regions. There are very few places in the world that can compete, and it is possible that they are forced to produce within the USA due to import/export restrictions on what they are manufacturing.

This is a situation where the decision is already made, but it can't hurt to ask for tax break. Because hey, free money.

Kind of like how Amazon "passed" on building out an NYC headquarters because the city wouldn't give them tax breaks (after locals protested), only to come back six months later and begin construction of their NYC HQ.

Sure, the tax thing is probably one of the maor component here. In addition to local taxes, my understanding that SAS's current plant is in free trade zone where they also receive exemption for import/sales taxes, etc.

The whole US semi industry is worried that the lion share of semi production is stlil occuring in Asia, not in the US -- which is probably why Trump admin started twisting TSMC and Samsung's arms few years ago:

https://www.semiconductors.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/20...

It's an interesting question: incentives. Samsung can't negotiate away wages like they can land taxes.

Look at it from the local government prospective, they could get 0 in tax income or they can settle from the tax income of thousands of new high income jobs.

Do gigafab manufactures like that really create high income jobs? I assumed it was mostly low income close to minimum wage kind of thing.

On a similar tangeant, how are these able to compete with similar manufacturing done in Asia or Africa?

I don't know anything about how they are run, but I would assume you need a large number of on-site engineers and process overseers. What are the low-income jobs? Security?

I thought it was mostly assembly line workers putting parts together, with machines doing the rest. Kinda like what this photo shows: https://bit.ly/3a8uRFM

That’s board assembly, not chip fabrication.

So you admit you were ignorant. That's a rarity on here. People will defend their wrong views here because they don't want to hear they aren't a polymath.

This is how it looks like now: https://www.extremetech.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/12/TSMC-...

Machines feed each other via conveyor belts, everything automated, tight control loops check/move things around.

Notice the difference in human presence.

Average salary is probably around $100k. Even the techs with high school educations can make in the range of $40-60 an hour and generous overtime.

>On a similar tangeant, how are these able to compete with similar manufacturing done in Asia or Africa?

Because it is all high skill labor. Techs that are able to strip down a 10 MM machine and identify the source of sub micron particule contamination are worth their weight in gold.

>>Average salary is probably around $100k. Even the techs with high school educations can make in the range of $40-60 an hour and generous overtime.

Do you have a source for that? I'm surprised as when I contracted at the Intel fab in PHX, the workers in the actual fab were not making anything close to that. Management maybe, but not actual line workers. The standing joke was "they were working for the stock"...

Were they working for the stock?

I found this which has a manufacturing plant section. No idea how accurate: https://www.zippia.com/intel-careers-6055/salary/#by-job-tit...

Hmm - that's interesting. If the "Intel Plant/Manufacturing Salaries" section is true, process technician and production operator (which I guess are the people that run the line?) make quite a bit below $100K. Oddly enough, it seems like the software jobs are better paid then the hardware ones?

Thanks for the link!

How is that odd? Software salaries have been outpacing hardware ones for at least the past 1-2 decades. When the big tech companies are paying over $100k for software developers fresh out of college, supply and demand is probably forcing this state of affairs.

I just would have figured a hardware company would be focusing on the hardware personnel.

After all, there are plenty of places that don't pay FAANG level salaries for software developers. I still regularly see < $60K software jobs advertised from smaller companies.

They may be costing the company the equivalent of $40–60/hr, but more realistically, techs are starting at < $20/hr and have to spend years on the payroll of a third-party staffing company.

That's a good point, $40-60/hr is the pay for seniors level techs. Entry level techs are making much less and are employed through staffing companies.

In Taiwan, an average semi technician salary is $38-$40k a year

> or they can settle from the tax income of thousands of new high income jobs.

There is no income tax in Texas. Even if there was, it would go to the state, not the county or city.

Property and sales taxes, then.

Dude, the whole thread started with a comment about Samsung trying to pay no property taxes.

OP means Property tax from employees. Because it creates a ton of jobs

There are plenty of businesses that create tons of jobs and pay their taxes.

Tax deductions aren't meaningful for most companies. Samsung is pretty limited on where they can actually build this plant. It's not like Hattiesburg, Mississippi is awash with people experienced in silicon fabrication. So the company would have to pay a lot of money to import people from other regions. But Hattiesburg isn't exactly top on the list of places where experienced technical professionals wish to live.

The city counsel should play hardball with Samsung, since they will cave. This is one of those situations where it doesn't hurt to ask, but the decision is already made.

But what says those people will live within Austin city limits (ba dum tiss) and pay property taxes to the government that gave out the tax break?

Surely a sizeable number would commute?

Also, collecting new property taxes from a corporation would allow the city to keep rates lower for residents.

texas doesn't have income tax.

The local government can lose money on this deal even if it leads to more jobs.

Someone has to build the roads, run the schools, pump the water, etc.

A tax cut for Samsung is effectively a tax hike for everyone else.

> A tax cut for Samsung is effectively a tax hike for everyone else.

That is a remarkably zero sum way to think about it.

zero sum implies everyone loses in the long run.

Samsung benefits. Texas state benefits. Workers benefit. Community benefits.

Please enumerate all the ways the community benefits. Be mindful to include externalities in your ledger.

These business can act as anchors to attract skilled talent to the region. If that happens, then a small no-name town can really prosper.

But the reality is that companies don't really want to be the ones anchoring a small town. The sacrifice is too great in terms of limited talent pool, and lack of amenities necessary to attract talented people. Maybe after 20 years, the town grows into something significant, but at that point, the market has shifted so much that it probably doesn't matter.

In this situation, the decision is made, regardless of tax incentives. Samsung can't just plop one of these plants anywhere. The plant needs to be in a place that has a large enough pool of talent, the amenities (schools, restaurants, housing, etc) that attract new talent (ideally without Samsung having to pay for relocation), and have the logistics infrastructure to support business.

I've seen plenty of large companies negotiate for aggressive tax breaks locally, only to up and move to places like NYC, LA, or another high-tax locale a few years later because they either can't attract talent, or senior executives don't like living in cheap midwestern cities.

Negative sum. Corruption destroys wealth. The vast majority loses a lot so that a few can benefit a little.

The difference between creating wealth and merely transferring wealth (aka theft, grift).

Companies can and do build their own roads -- we aren't exactly talking about building interstate highways. Schools would be paid for by SAS employees and contractors' paycheck and additional local property taxes (for those who have to relocate from another place). I highly doubt that SAS is going to get free water.

Parmer Lane, the road that SAS sits off of, is a parking lot in the morning and evening. I have to think that Austin is planning on expansion eventually if yet more people are driving on it, because that's what Texas does - build wider and wider roads, public transportation be damned.

The precedent was set long ago, and if Austin does not take it I can assure you some other city will..

Why, it is easy... a new factory (or a factory expansion) means more jobs, more jobs means more people, more people means more Home and more secondary businesses all of which the local government will get taxes from.

In principle I agree, but in reality Austin will make more tax revenue from these other properties and business than the amount of the abatement

Source? Just like this comment in the story - " Nonetheless, the deal still makes a lot of sense for the state". Numbers, please?

Samsung has been around Austin, TX since the late 1990's and invested well over $15B. I think the state and county officials have enough dataset to evaluate whether Samsung's new expansion would benefit their community or not.

In this case, it seems like a viable investment by the state. We're talking about a leading node fab, not a nebulous "LCD manufacturing center."

That's a bit harder to vaporware, and more importantly, why would you?

That worked out great for Wisconsin residents recently

For every one deal that went sour, there are hundreds of successes.

Additionally, comparing a rushed Foxconn plant to a Samsung fab facility, in an area where Samsung already has roots, is dishonest to say the least.

Source? How does one even begin to measure the opportunity costs of pitting politicians with short term incentives against each other? Many of the supposed benefits aren’t even able to be calculated.

The source is the hundreds of large corporations that have came to a remote location away the already larger and established metro areas with international airports nearby, so your usual suspects of LA, SF, NYC and ATL.

There almost always is some incentive package to attract the businesses. My city, Charlotte, has 10 examples alone. Neighboring Charleston and Columbia in SC have quite a few examples of theirs, namely in Aerospace and Auto Manufacturing.

How can one figure out if they would not have come anyway due to lower wages/land prices?

What benefits? Every fab becomes an ecological disaster over time. They should be assessed penalty rates not given discount rates to cover the future cost of cleanup.

Wisconsin's tax break was conditional on Foxconn meeting key hiring/production metrics. Foxconn had a long trail of failures building viable manufacturing business outside China where the CCP provided everything from free land, to free buildings, to unlimited supply of young, obedient, unskilled labor pool for rural China.

Samsung on the other hand has been in Austin, Texas for almost two decades, investing well over $15+B so far.

I'd like to sell you a car, since you're not the negotiating type.

It’s a prisoners dilemma situation - cities would be better off if across the board they just applied the rules evenly, but there’s always a place that’s willing to sacrifice that for its own benefit.

Its not just residents, its a complete violation of free market.

How are startups and family businesses meant to compete when the megacorps get special deals, pay no taxes and get bailouts? This is how you get monopolies and oligopolies.

I worked at SAS a couple of years ago. The majority of jobs they will be offering are contractor positions with no benefits, and pay that in no way compensates for the crazy schedules they run. Starting pay was about $18/hr in 2018.

They aim for ~2/3 of their technicians being contracted positions. A tech might work there for YEARS before a conversion spot finally opens up. It's an absolute travesty and should not be allowed, IMO. Why should a company be allowed to have people doing the exact same jobs but only offering benefits to a select few?

Isn't that like exactly the sort of thing the interstate commerce clause was originally meant to stop? There shouldn't be such competition between states or local governments, whether real or just negotiation bluff.

No, states compete on tax structures all the time. Look at the Amazon headquarters boondoggle a while back, states were falling all over themselves to offer the best tax/infrastructure packages.

Then just have places like San Diego always win because they have nature on their side?

But really I think the taxes here would technically count as within-state commerce, as they would be taxing a resident business if it is built.

Eventually San Diego fills up. Why not let efficiency dictate these things?

Filling up is winning. The population will stop growing soon enough and it becomes a zero-sum game.

There are still people moving. Internal migration is bigger than external. Cities develop even if the population is roughly stable. Generations are not the same size, etc.

Also the economy changes.

It cannot really become zero-sum in my view. Could you explain how you think about this?

How is that different from the deals that pretty much every other large company looks for when locating a new facility? Amazon pretty much had local governments humiliating themselves in their HQ 2 'contest' not too long ago.

It's not. And while there's opportunity to make a big construction more efficient by handling permitting/approval in a bundle (combined with some of the necessary developments in traffic/transportation, housing), that doesn't mean cutting corners and just crippling the state/city budget.

One of my favorite things to do when I am depressed due to negativity is to read Hacker News comments when Dropbox launched and the NYTimes story on space flight being impossible.

I am going to add this submission to that list.

It's kind of odd that Anandtech seems to make a lot of fuss about Samsung's tax break whereas Anandtech's recent article on TSMC's Arizon plant mentions virtually none of the same tax break highlighted for Samsung there. Is Apple still hiring away Anandtech's key editors?

https://www.anandtech.com/show/15803/tsmc-build-5nm-fab-in-a...

Comparing an article by a different author from a year ago. gg

That fab in Texas was the one used to manufacture the early Apple A-series processors. The media and most pundits generally assumed they were made in South Korea, because Samsung.

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