Comment by bluecalm | Hacker News Reader

Comment by bluecalm | Hacker News Reader

As someone (still) living in Poland and paying taxes there I find it bizarre. We are giving 1.9b USD to Intel as a subsidy, not even a tax break as Intel won't pay any here (the factory is in a special economic zone) while our government keeps raising taxes on local businesses.

This is a huge subsidy, if Intel employs planned 2000 people 1.9b USD can pay their wages for about 30 years. It's not even a high tech factory or anything like that and we don't get any preferential access to it as EU demands "open EU factory" status for it.

If Intel thinks it's not profitable to open the factory here without a subsidy how comes it's profitable for Poland to pay 1/3 of the price without getting any equity, profit share, IP or anything in exchange?

I have trouble seeing the rationale. If you think local manufacturing is good why not make it more attractive for everyone and not pick winners and give subsidies to them? is there any chance Poland gets almost 2b USD back as return on this "investment"?

> I have trouble seeing the rationale.

The government can brag about "amazing" high-tech investment and new jobs in Poland. They'll just put aside the fact, that the real deal is going to happen somewhere else (in Germany, also heavily subsidized, btw.), while the Polish workers will "gain" knowledge in testing and packaging (AFAIK).

If they will employ polish chip engineers, that's a net win for the country in the long term.

If they employ polish cheap engineers it will be a net loose.

Sure, since they don't have much experience, but in time, they will.

The OP wrote "chip", not "cheap". ;)

Idk how it's supposed to work. Do you think there are any chances for Polish chip companies arising? You could send 1000 of those guys to work for free in facilicties around the world using 5% of the money. I see it as a giant subsidy for a foreign business at the cost of Polish entrepreneurs.

Why not? They created the best looking game evar, zeroing the competition, without using any of the bloated game engines on the market.

But how giving 2B to Intel helps with that? Again you could send thousands of Polish engineers to work for free at major facilities around the world using a fraction of this money if you want them to get more experienced. We are not helping any Polish firms with that move just taking away from them and giving it to US firm.

Its a packaging plant. Something intel used to do in the nineties in Malaysia, Costa Rica, Vietnam. Do you happen to know of any Costa Rica chip wins arising from this?

Its a pure subsidies scam :| and Im going to pay for it :(

I heard this will be a testing and packaging facility. Your argument still holds, though.

I get the feeling it wont be testing and packaging where testing is heavy duty metrology, characterizing silicon, inspection, defect analysis, binning. It will be packaging and testing of packaged chips with press button to receive bacon machine.

https://www.rp.pl/biznes/art41124241-gawkowski-komisja-europ...

> Zakład integracji i testowania półprzewodników Intela

This translates to "Intel's semiconductor integration and testing plant". So it looks like it'll be more than just testing finished product, but we'll soon find out anyway.

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