This isn't about Intel, it's about keeping US companies competitive in leading edge semiconductor manufacturing. If we let Intel fail, we'd have an even tougher battle to get some other US company to compete.
Case in point: GlobalFoundry had EUV machines but returned them to ASML as they weren't able to compete technically and capital wise. They would be the best to take over Intel's assets but they weren't competitive years ago, why would they be now?
2) idk where you're getting the idea that Intel is paying massive dividends when it has been one of the worst performing tech stocks for years. The SW companies juiced up on low interest rates have done far better.
Yeah. Channelling Michael Dell, October 6, 1997, they should shut it down and give the money back to the shareholders.
Or more seriously, everything changes over time. Intel goes from good to bad, GlobalFoundry can go from bad to good.
If we really care about fostering and furthering these resources, we need to free them from being held captive, under-utilized and mis-allocated inside a repeatedly failing corporation - not propping up failing corporations. If the resources in question really are both viable and valuable, releasing them will allow the free market to do what it does best - efficiently allocate resources.
No central planning committee created U.S. economic leadership by picking which corporations to subsidize, so no central planning committee can "preserve" or restore that leadership by picking "winners" to subsidize. We need to let Schumpeter's creative disruption keep doing it's job of cleansing, educating and renewing the market through re-allocation of resources. That's what put us in the lead and it's what will keep us there.
Earlier this month, Intel announced that they've suspended dividend payments entirely. Prior to that, their dividend payments were decent but far from "massive".
Speaking of, how's Boeing doing lately?
There a case to be made for subsidizing core enabling industries.
There's a lot of successful examples of governments using protectionism and subsidies to build globally competitive industries.
In case of Boeing their business pivoted in order to extract the funds themselves, not to use funds to make products. Thats the problem, corruption and profit chasing over product creation.
How's the US farming industry doing? I wonder why you brought up a completely different industry in a different country ran by a dictator instead of a core industry right here in the US that has been heavily subsidized for decades and for very good reason.
If I was going to fight my own argument I would probably try the heavy government investment into silicon valley for military purposes. It clearly worked out pretty well. At the same time, the government didn't bail out Shockley after all the talent left to Fairchild.
2) ethanol is less than 50% of corn production, which is in itself about 25% of the crops in the US.
3) > If I was going to fight my own argument I would probably try the heavy government investment into silicon valley for military purposes. It clearly worked out pretty well. At the same time, the government didn't bail out Shockley after all the talent left to Fairchild.
This is a bad faith comparison.
Intel isn't asking for money because its top talent left to start an even more successful US based semiconductor manufacturer. Instead, the whole US semiconductor industry has been slowly off-shored after decades of US capital and talent doing the math and realizing that SW pays a lot better. Intel is simply the last holdout due to its vertical integration providing higher margins which allowed it to afford the higher US wages, until recently.
If the US had started the CHIPS act 10 years ago when there were other US companies anywhere close to the leading edge (i.e. GlobalFoundry) then it wouldn't effectively be an Intel bailout, but that's not Intel's fault.
These markets are already destroyed and have been by corporations.
America doesn't have an economy. Well, not really. We don't make anything. We used to, when we had a manufacturing industry, but they all left and now stuff is made somewhere else and shipped here.
Same thing happened with automobiles and will only get worse when the inevitably better Chinese cars come in.
But, at least, we had computer. Except now we lose that too.
Look, the US is currently only propped up on invisible money and greed. What we do it make someone else do the work, and then turn around and sell it for 10x more, and pocket the difference. We justify it with having busy bodies in suits sitting around "creating value" or something. Tada! Highest GDP in the world.
It's only a matter of time before these countries, like Taiwan, China, Bangladesh, India, wisen up and realize what's going on. Soon, they're gonna put two and two together and realize THEY are the US economy. They make everything. They have all the capital. They have the means of production. We don't.
We're on thin ice. If we let more US industries die off to be replaced by manufacturing in other countries, we won't have anything left. In my opinion, the situation is unsustainable. I don't know how much longer we have, and I think the consequences will be more severe than anyone is imagining.