If the US tax payer gets a significant stake in the chip fab venture, I would be OK with this. We want to secure national security via chip manufacturing and you want billions of dollars? Give us some upside.
I don't want to hear it creates jobs, it generates blah blah blah, a real equity stake and possibly repayment of the capital. Creating jobs should be a happy by-product of subsidizing an industry that is probably more well capitalized than any other in existence.
According to (https://startupanz.com/5-tech-giants-hold-588b-cash-reserves...) Amazon, Apple, Google, and Microsoft had 526 billion dollars between the four of them in cash reserves. They have over half a TRILLION dollars in cash. If this were life or death, they could afford anything.
But the calculus is offload risk onto the tax payer (despite being a shareholder directly in all those companies or indirectly via mutual funds/etfs), I don't want to be left holding the bag with no upside beyond the general sentiment of 'national security was secured' while private companies reap all the benefits.
I don't want to hear it creates jobs, it generates blah blah blah, a real equity stake and possibly repayment of the capital. Creating jobs should be a happy by-product of subsidizing an industry that is probably more well capitalized than any other in existence.
According to (https://startupanz.com/5-tech-giants-hold-588b-cash-reserves...) Amazon, Apple, Google, and Microsoft had 526 billion dollars between the four of them in cash reserves. They have over half a TRILLION dollars in cash. If this were life or death, they could afford anything.
But the calculus is offload risk onto the tax payer (despite being a shareholder directly in all those companies or indirectly via mutual funds/etfs), I don't want to be left holding the bag with no upside beyond the general sentiment of 'national security was secured' while private companies reap all the benefits.