Robert Ariail for July 26, 2022

Obviously this is Biden’s fault.

US-made semiconductors would not work.

The “conservative” policies of the past several decades allowed and even encouraged businesses to move production off-shore. What could go wrong? Ask the semiconductor industry, ask that question about problems with meds and even IV bags, and just keep moving down the line.

So, opspecial, ultra ammosexual, kat and alfred brown, the free market, some times it needs prodding?:

Let’s get it straight. It’s the small cheap semis that are in short supply.

Seems Bernie and the Repuglickings are on China’s side in this one. I guess when the war comes China will win by default because none of our weapons will work!!

Among the fundamental Laws of Capitalism: Capital moves to where it can grow fastest….

…which is often off-shore, to the detriment of our middle class and national security.

National interests that restrict the movement are anti-Capitalist. This is not a bad thing, but you won’t find many politicians (or any GOP) tell these truths.

So who here loved to laugh at Ross Perrot when he screamed that NAFTA and outsourcing was really bad for this country.EVERY Washington politician profited from stock that increased for cheaper labor cost.

Trust the republicans to try to stop a measure that’s good for America and its military:

https://fortune.com/2022/07/25/chips-act-semiconductor-senate-bill-gop-intel/

Ford and partners started building a US chip plant almost a year ago. Panasonic is building a chip plant near Austin TX.

Funnily enough Panasonic had a chip plant in San Antonio until about 2008, when they shut the plant down and moved to China. Now here they are just 22 years later, having to build a plant in the US again. It would be nice if the idiots who moved out of the US to begin with lost their stock options for having that very bad idea, but of course they won’t

When I got off active duty my second job was at a semi-conductor plant as security. The building is still intact. Been abandoned for 9 years and was just sold last month to a developer.

We used to make things in this nation. And while globalization is good for some things, a nation such as ours must retain a lot of organic control. Politicians have forgotten this. Now we see it wholesale.

I work in healthcare. After a hurricane hit Puerto Rico, the world took a massive hit when it came to IV fluids because they made a massive portion of the world’s supply there. Now with Covid, there is essentially one supplier for the world to make IV contrast dye for CAT scans. It’s located in…..China. So now our sensitivity of these scans is quite limited. We have medication shortages. Why? They’re all made elsewhere. Common antibiotics, basic medications for control of asthma or blood pressure. Now we see computer chips as an issue. Lat year there were lots in Detroit with nearly completed vehicles awaiting their chips – upwards of 70,000 vehicles for Ford alone.

But who else is to blame? I dare say our nation’s people are. The people in our nation don’t want our kids to grow up working in factories. I am the first one in my family to ever graduate college – my entire family worked retail or manufacturing. We just don’t want that for our children, and so we ship things off to Taiwan, China, Bangladesh, Vietnam, Mexico, et. al. to make our toys, and clothes, and sneakers, and suits, and semiconductors, and IV contrast dye, and every other flippin’ thing.

Then these big companies think they can ship this stuff elsewhere and save money. But do they really, truly save money? If so, how much? Is it really that much cheaper to make a bicycle in Taiwan or China, ship it over here on a boat, and distribute it from the docks, pay the taxes and tariffs, and get it to the bike shop? If it is cheaper, then how much?

Fascism is a system of government led by a dictator who typically rules by forcefully and often violently suppressing opposition and criticism, controlling all industry and commerce, and promoting nationalism and often racism.

First off. The leading manufacturer of chips is Intel, an American company that has factories in San Jose California. Others include NVIDIA, Qualcom, Texas Instruments, Microchip. The issue is the type of chips. Electronics manufacturers use many components in their devices some of which are manufactured over seas.

Secondly. This is capitalism at work. Chip manufacturers in the USA see no need to invest in the factories needed to manufacture the chips in short supply. Factories are very expensive investments and they may not see much profit from building them. They will take the government’s money to build them, however.

The CEO of ASML, a tech chip manufacturer, warned the world’s path out of the ongoing chip shortage will get even more complicated if the U.S. blocks it from selling a wider range of its high-end chip-making equipment to China.

https://www.thomasnet.com/articles/top-suppliers/semiconductor-suppliers-manufacturers/#us

About 2008, we were not allowed to use a personal thumb drive on our military work computers. Most came from China and there was no way (at the time?) to check for hidden malware or hardware. You could only use authorized thumb drives. Warnings were posted in squadrons everywhere and software was installed that would “rat you out” to HQ across the street. Automatic Letter of Reprimand.

Why do people consume this??

Used to be that US machines of war had to be built on-shore. Then some big companies that were the core to the military-industrial complex got a change in the law to allow off-shor manufacturing. That collapsed an entire US jobs industry and sent the money off-shore and left us vulnerable.