> to create a new lobbying group to press for government chip manufacturing subsidies
None of those companies need subsidies.
Commoditize your complement. To some approximation and with few exceptions, hardware is everybody's complement.
But in terms of maintaining the competitiveness and security of the US, seems like they do.
As a rule, I don't care if giving someone money is fair. I care about whether it causes a general increase in the welfare of our society.
Even as a non-recipient of these subsidies, I might be better off if they existed if they reduce risk to the supply chain I'm downstream of as a consumer. If it's unfair to me but makes me better off, I'm not going to cry over the unfairness.
(Maybe tariffs on imported chips are a better solution, but I suspect that's more politically fraught, and solutions that work are better than solutions that don't.)
Sure
> I care about whether it causes a general increase in the welfare of our society.
But by what metric do you measure that? There has been a tech boom in the last couple of decades but the inequality divide has been growing day by day.
But economics works on incentives. Problem is these incentives are discontinuous and can change on a dime. You can accelerate a change by aligning incentives.
Chip manufacturing is important for products, but its also a security risk. The government should put up support to incentivize these companies to redirect capital towards US manufacturing. Otherwise the incentives for these companies are not going to align on a timeframe that is acceptable to employees and shareholders.
Now we can make all kinds of normative claims about how this should play out, but I honestly don’t have the energy to entertain that kind of conversation anymore.
They acknowledge the importance of the issue, but are not willing to take risks in a difficult an foreign (to them) business.
So, mostly worthless words.