For national security, we need a state of affairs wherein it is profitable to build and run a plant in the U.S. that responds primarily to the dynamic needs of private actors. All of the issues there are on the cost side of the ledger.
Seemed to work when Taiwan basically funded TSMC. If they can do it, why can't we do it?
I mean, the USA is also funding TSMC to move to Arizona. I don't got nothing against this, but domestic chip-makers should also get a piece of the pie, right?
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In any case, this isn't "Pork". Pork is when you build something useless in somebody's state (aka: The Bridge to Nowhere), so that those "somebodies" vote on some other bill.
Aka: Build a bridge in Alaska to nowhere, and __suddenly__ your Alaskan senators / house members starts the process of log-rolling and helps out on other bills.
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Pork was incredibly common in the 80s and 90s, and has been cut down in the modern era. Today, its impossible to get logrolling, because too many people have demonized pork.
If you want to get Senators / House members to support a large-scale bill, you HAVE to have something in there for them. Imagine how much easier it would have been to get Joe Manchin to vote for the infrastructure bill if we tossed in a few coal subsidies (aka: West Virginia Pork) into the infrastructure bill.
Alas: today's citizens are ignorant to the wonders of pork. Its actually very easy to convince other senators / house members to do something useful. You just gotta give them a bit of pork.
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Pork isn't about making the underlying thing more efficient. Its about convincing leaders to support the project to begin with and get it greenlit in the first place. Without pork, you can't effectively build a coalition. And today's Senate / House is proof of that, its incredibly difficult to get anything done because of our anti-Pork culture.
Life was better with pork. We did our grand experiment over the past 30 years by demonizing pork, and it failed. Time to bring Pork back.
I'm simply a pragmatist. We know Congress is perpetually deadlocked and that we haven't had a proper budget in damn near a decade. Maybe its time to whip out the old Pork technique. That's all I'm saying.
Anyone who studied how these budgets got passed 30 or 40 years ago knows: Pork was essential in building coalitions (especially across party lines). You scratch my back, I scratch yours. If you help me pass X Bill, I'll write a useless thing into the Bill that benefits your state.
Lets bring it back. Lets get Congressmen working together again.
> For national security, we need a state of affairs wherein it is profitable to build and run a plant in the U.S. that responds primarily to the dynamic needs of private actors.
National Security should revolve around the profit motives of a handful of private actors? Hard pass.
DOD is a rural jobs program. It functions as intended.
Other branches of the federal government that aren't designed to be jobs programs (e.g., NSF) do tend to make good investments and get things done.
The way to do that is massive tariffs, not pork. They will be met with retaliatory tariffs.
It is a company that is responsible for the final integration of a system, but often fans out subcomponents to a large assortment of other companies.