Senate passes bipartisan bill to subsidize U.S.-made semiconductor chips
washingtonpost.com
washingtonpost.com
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.
From the labor cost and natural resource consumption a operation of this size can easily fail. We need more partners in this not just a handout.
This action should have little to no input on any globalized leverage system.
For this to be successful we need more partners
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]
[1]: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-05-13/korea-unv... [1 Non paywalled]: https://archive.ph/9Gs8q
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?
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.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_semiconductor_fabricat...
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.
What are these? Can you quote them?
Pompeo could qualify I suppose? Though he was Secretary of State, which seems to be more than a "personality".
The rest of the "details" are about the opinions of congressmen, not "personalities".
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.
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.
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.
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.
At their tech level there's probably hundreds of companies with fabs[1]. GP was explicitly talking about cutting edge fabs.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_semiconductor_fabricat...
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
And there's new legislation encouraging investment in the cutting edge stuff.
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.
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.
Unless we actually start seeing cyclical job losses finally hit right when this money starts being spent. Which is entirely possible.
Labor is tight, but once production is up the supply curve shifts and prices start going down.
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.
The bill says "for section 9902/9906 of Public Law 116-283". This can be found on page 1460 here: https://www.congress.gov/116/plaws/publ283/PLAW-116publ283.p...
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).
> 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.
They should be paying out a large sum ONLY on completion, defined as when the first 10 million semiconductors are delivered to commercial customers.
Grove was a visionary in many ways and his writing on this back in 2010 or so impacted my thinking.
https://prospect.org/environment/andy-grove-trade-globalizat...
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.
He was also the former CEO of Intel, so you know, not exactly impartial on the subject.
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.
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.
Analog gets some signal integrity benefits from larger transistors, and often we have fairly large fets for low rdson and high voltage tolerance.
I suppose you could announce tariffs which will take place 5 years down the line? And ramp it up over time?
ie. the current bill only passed because both political parties are fine with giving companies government money.
Is the market really free with tariffs?
It’s more of a political slogan than an actual policy.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Dear reader, this was not true in any shape.
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."
- Harry Browne 1974 (but just as relevant today).
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.
Example please.
Since this is HN though maybe these will ring a bell :
* Intel's rebate program (https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/news/press-releases/2010/08/...) which ended up with a $1.2B payment to AMD
* Microsoft's notorious antitrust case (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Microsoft_Cor....)
* AT&T abusing its monopoly status and being broken up (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._AT%26T)
Honestly this is such an obvious notion that the fact that you're asking for examples is suspect on its own.
> The self-interest of each human being, his continual search for whatever he wants, is a natural law.
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?
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).
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.
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.
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.
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.
If such a thing existed then you would be right.
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.
Well, which do you want? You can't have both.
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.
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?
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.
- 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".
If it happened, which it didn't.
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.
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.
Corporate welfare and bailouts are also big ones.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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].
[1] https://www.exacthowmuch.com/how-much-does-it-cost-to-build-...
[2] https://builtin.com/hardware/american-made-semiconductor-cos...
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.
Push it up 50 percent. This quarter trillion dollars is going straight on the debt pile so it will hurt a lot, just not today.
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.
And they are, and have always been.
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.
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.
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.
Agreed. The alternatives should have been presented. Maybe include this in partnership with canada, mexico and others. Where the wonks at?
American Laws & Regulations prohibit domestic semiconductor manufacturing without Government subsidies.
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.
What would you recommend?
Tariffs alone would only allow for domestic balancing of those subsidies but lose you the global market. So again, what would you recommend instead.
And the remaining $228B...?
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.
There's a direct relationship between international trade agreements and border security
This is just a taxpayer gift to multinationals. If you want to undo globalization, handouts aren't the solution, tariffs are.
e.g. at current market shares, we could
- 10% tax for Asia manufacturing
- 20% tax for Taiwan manufacturing
By moving away from these centers, taxes would be adjusted say annually
I think this would be interesting for other industries too
#ChinaDecoupling
H. R. 4346: The CHIPS and Science Act of 2022 - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32250207 - July 2022 (77 comments)
House Bill Funds CHIPS Act, Stresses R&D - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31560844 - May 2022 (111 comments)
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.
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.
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.
There is nothing immoral or wrong about them.
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.
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.
[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 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...
- Ronald Reagan
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.
[0] https://marianamazzucato.com/books/the-entrepreneurial-state
[1] https://anthempress.com/kicking-away-the-ladder-pb
[2] https://www.versobooks.com/books/2822-the-people-s-republic-...
Pelosi isn't even the worst offender...
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/senate-passes-280b-s...
It’s also interesting because it appears the title on the fox article changed so idk man
Lets make these blokes take a MINIMAL entry level exam;
* What is a data base
* What is personal identifiable identification and why does it mattter
* What does a walled garden mean
So many functionally identifiable comms
These fucking morons cant even state the above.
De-Seat them all.
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.
Your congressperson doesn't know what a database is because they don't care, not because they're dumb.
* 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?
https://nypost.com/2022/07/23/nancy-and-paul-pelosi-are-trad...
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].
[1]: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/jeff-bezos-joe-biden-inflation-...
[2]: https://publicintegrity.org/inequality-poverty-opportunity/c...
[3]: https://www.splcenter.org/news/2022/07/01/alabama-diverts-40...
[4]: https://apnews.com/article/biden-police-pennsylvania-wilkes-...
[5]: https://www.vox.com/22600143/poverty-us-covid-19-pandemic-st...
[6]: https://www.chicagotribune.com/suburbs/lake-county-news-sun/...
Unfortunately 52 senators get to control the agenda, and they get to decide what is "affordable" and "too expensive."
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)
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.
You're ignoring that gerrymandering districts allow politicians to enact policies that don't reflect the will of the people.
But that would be even worse at a federal level because there are so many more districts to gerrymander, wouldn't it?
Also, states draw the federal district lines, so generally the Dems and Repubs both do it and the end result is less lopsided.
This makes sense because we want people to freely move around the country without encountering wildly different systems in every small town.
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.
1. https://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2019/04/boston...
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.
Not enough to claim that the federal government must take responsibility for all assistance programs, however.
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.
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.
Sure they do (except stuff like tariffs). They just face competition from other states on how much they tax their citizens.
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...
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.
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.
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.
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').
[0] https://www.schooldigger.com/go/CA/schools/2961004596/school...
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Perhaps we should ask the parents who are encouraged to not feed their own children because of the existence of these programs.
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.
Actually I’d rather they spend the money on teachers rather than lunches for kids whose parents can afford to pay for their own.
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.
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).
You can bridge consensus on all sides when there is a boogeyman that isn't another American.
A $10 coffee can be too expensive while a $1000 MacBook is really cheap.
I’m not making any particular claims about the free school meals program, just noting that this argument doesn’t hold water as it stands.
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.
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.
https://www.ers.usda.gov/topics/food-nutrition-assistance/fo...
The metric of whether or not someone literally dies of starvation is a pathetic 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.
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?
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.
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
https://stackyourdollars.com/eat-on-5-a-day/
that's bacon/eggs/toast for breakfast beef burritos for lunch chicken and vegetables for dinner
and that meat you're spending money on can all be replaced by far cheaper healthier alternatives like lentils or beans
So again, you've got no idea what you're talking about
yet another $5/day menu that includes snacks, with mostly healthy foods and surpasses most peoples calorie needs https://uhs.berkeley.edu/sites/default/files/sos-eatingwell5...
I could do this all day, honestly as it's not even remotely hard to eat very healthy and very well on $5/day
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
Yea, maybe where ever you live, not here.
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.
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.
Right back at ya.
I wouldn't go that far. Federal and state governments provide about half of education funding [0] and the way they dish it out is basically inversely proportional to how much funding a school gets through their local property taxes.
Without that, funding would be very unbalanced. Although I'd be fine with reducing federal government funding/taxes with proportionate increase by the states.
[0]: https://apps.urban.org/features/school-funding-do-poor-kids-...
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.
The income requirements often times are far too high especially if you're in gentrifying areas due to cost of living.
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.
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).
Global risk is increasing dramatically, so it only makes sense for net military expenditures to increase also.
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.
https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/senate-democrats-unveil-long...
https://news.gallup.com/poll/356939/support-legal-marijuana-...
https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/perspectives-on-poli...
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.
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.
https://www.congress.gov/bill/114th-congress/house-bill/2187
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.
I'll have to look into it more though.
* Medicare for all: 55% support, 32% oppose.
* Civil asset forfeiture: 16% support, 86% oppose.
I'm getting throttled so I might not be able to reply in a timely fashion.
[0]: https://morningconsult.com/2021/03/24/medicare-for-all-publi...
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.
Of that 11%, there is a 1% chance the resulting vote aligns with the preferences of the median earner
Maybe our elected representatives simply agree that national security is a priority just like the people who voted them into office?
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.
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.
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.
This is a big reason why Roe was never codified imo
This is exactly how lobbying works, and it's depressing how insanely cheap our countries are being sold for.
- https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2012/01/06/144737864/forg...
- https://www.forbes.com/sites/adamandrzejewski/2019/05/14/how...
For example, if a corporation doesn't like that the IRS is scrutinizing them they can just lobby congress to gut the IRS.
https://www.propublica.org/article/the-irs-decided-to-get-to...
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...
https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/perspectives-on-poli...
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 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.)
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.)
Is there? Or is there just more consensus among the elite and Ivy League educated who dominate security discussion and policy?
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.
People who have been involved in politics and have experience with budgets and governing SHOULD be the ones making decisions.
Next time you get heart surgery, ask for the fringe thinking fresh college grad and see how that goes.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
That's the only acceptable answer to that question.
“But free school lunches also provide a positive ROI!” I agree with you, now convince your representative of it.
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.
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.
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.
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.
The US spends $19 billion a year on free lunches for low income American children.
Universal free lunch for all would cost $30 billion a year.
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.
[1]: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-05-13/korea-unv... [1 Non paywalled]: https://archive.ph/9Gs8q
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
How else would you prefer this to be? Of course a majority of Senators get to control the agenda…
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.
I guess sensible measures like this don't boost the share portfolios of politicians' spouses though.
US should use the demand to fund an effective semiconductor industry, not shrink the pie to account for its ineffectiveness.
Sure, some people would still use them but it'd be a rounding error compared to current adoption.
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.