This assumes that every college grad is guaranteed a decent starting income. It seems that on average new grads are struggling more now than they used to to get jobs in their fields, especially higher paying jobs. And that perception is probably magnified by internet horror stories such as every 3rd post on r/cscareers.
Yes this kind of math doesn’t make sense in places and industries where pay is not high and job prospects are difficult. Like liberal arts. Or third world countries.
And that is the point: do the math that assesses the incomes correctly and many people won’t see as college as sensible for those professions.
This is just anecdote, but my roommate's dad works in construction management specifically for semiconductor fabs, and he was working for about a year on one of Intel's new fabs in Arizona up until a few months ago when the entire project was suddenly scrapped. IIRC he got the sense it was someone high up in intel that decided to pull the plug on it.
I left the semiconductor industry 30 years ago but back then every company had "a fab that hasn't been completed in Arizona" that people would talk fondly of perhaps opening one day if business picks up. Seems like not much has changed.
I always thought it was funny that for my entire lifetime people have talked about Arizona being perfect for fabs because it's dry there and not subject to tremors meanwhile Taiwan where 60% of all chips are produced (and 90% of the most sensitive ones) is tropical and has earthquakes fairly frequently.
Semiconductor fabs require a significant amount of water, with some large facilities consuming up to 10 million gallons of ultrapure water daily. Water is something Arizona is lacking.
I thought these days the fabs in water-scarce areas collect their waste water. re-purify it, and re-use it. So their actual drain on outside water sources is far lower.
> It will initially have a water recycling rate of around 85 percent, with a goal to achieve 90 percent. Currently, the company’s water resource center has an efficiency rate of 65 percent, converting industrial wastewater for use in the company's operations.
China Airlines recently opened a new direct flight route between Taoyuan and Phoenix. They've been plastering it all over their plane signage. I thought it was funny that the flight must be pretty empty other than the handful of TSMC employees that need to go there.
Phoenix is the fifth largest city in the United States. It is also one of the major hubs of the west, being in a good location (midway north), having good weather for planes, and having America West headquartered there.
I would think there should be plenty of traffic going through there to Taiwan, similar to the amount going through a hub such as Chicago or NY.
PHX was the 11th-busiest airport in the United States in terms of passenger boardings and 35rd-busiest in the world in 2024. The airport serves as a hub for American Airlines and a base for Frontier Airlines and Southwest Airlines.
Earlier this year Eva Air also announced a direct route to Dallas, supposedly starting next month. At the time I felt like it was a tariff negotiation tactic because that one also does not make sense.
Why do you think the Chinese people from Taiwan want to do anything in Arizona? They're there just to placate the orange guy's rage. They'll never do anything special there.
Chaos monkey yes...but more like desperation for survival. Its the same mentality that drives Israel. As been shown a few times, it mutates into a sick culture with unintended consequences...but obviously it does produce results.
There were 2 under construction, this is a local news story that they completed "Fab 52" instead of "pulling the plug". Fatter NYT story here: https://archive.is/WmXxl
Intel didn't cancel any fabs in Arizona, one just came online. They killed plans Fabs in Poland and Germany, and the Ohio fab is on hold. You don't get the money up front, so nothing to give back.
I doubt there was much; the sort of outright subsidy the US sometimes does is usually classed as unlawful state aid in the EU (there are exceptions; in particular member states were allowed to bail out/nationalise their banks in the financial crisis. But subsidies to random foreign companies would generally be illegal; see the Apple tax case).
The way that worked is that part of the CHIPs act after Intel reached a milestone the USG handed them a bag of cash.
Intel failed at finishing a bunch of milestones so there was a large pot of money Intel did not get. Trump gave them that pot of money in return for 10% stock.
You can make up your own mind about whether investing money into a company that couldn't achieve milestones is a good idea.
I mean the Jones act was pretty practical for it's time. When you could obtain a ship via a cheap lease from the US Navy then the lack of capital spend building the ship is fine to spend employing US sailors.
However, now that the navy is out of the business of buying overpriced ships to rent out (with the idea that they'd be repurposed if a war broke out) now the Jones act isn't very effective.
However, unlike the Jones Act there's no criteria that Intel be able to supply chips. At least with the Jones Act we're going to have US citizens practiced sailing ships. With the stock purchase Intel doesn't need to have capacity to build chips for missiles/drones/etc; especially with the government treating them as non-voting shares!
If the USG wanted a hedge they should've just forked some money over for an option to buy X chips for $Y. Or some more complex option about fab time / output. You hedge production concerns with futures not equity!
It's also not great to hedge by using a vendor that wasn't able to meet previous goals you gave them. Counterparty risk is a real thing.
Yeah hence the “I don’t know that I would” it was more an attempt to see it from their point of view and assume a rationale, there may not have been one or not a sensible one we can infer with what is publicly known, as an outsider I can’t say the US is a rational actor at this point.
Fabs need pretty solid foundations IIRC, the systems don't like vibration. So this won't have been a cheap build. I also believe the construction methods for clean room is like a VOC purge on steroids. Whatever else goes into this build would have a huge impact on potentially reclaiming it for VLSI.
I mean, not to sound rude, but of course it would be someone high up who would make that decision. It’s not like a grunt could decide to scrap a whole new fab
Yea fair. What I was trying to say was that it seemed like a decision that was less the construction/development team saying "this plan isn't workable for xyz reason and we need to reconsider our approach" and more someone high up saying "we are cancelling this and we won't say why".
I could be wrong but I’d assume what the OP is trying to say is that the leadership of these companies does not want these fabs to actually open and work. That something transpired maybe between them and govt.
Your writing style reminds me a lot of the titular short story in "Liberation Day" by George Saunders. I really hope you stick with writing because I think it is quite good.
I live in LA and my girlfriend worked for a long time in homeless services and in her experience you have the causality wrong. Often people either start drug habits or their existing drug habits become worse in response to homelessness. As an example, she's met half a dozen people who live on the street and smoke meth specifically to stay awake so their stuff doesn't get stolen. And I agree on your point about LAHSA being way over budgeted, much of what they're doing is a complete waste of money.
Meth can keep you up longer but you’ll still need to sleep eventually.
People like to justify “bad” behavior. We all do it all the time. I just ate some potato chips even though I knew I had enough food today because I have a long day tomorrow and told myself it’d help me sleep.
Who said all the time? Thats a strawman you construct just to knock down. Obviously that isnt practical. This is a bad faith assertion.
We could take a moment to think abiut how it starts and why. Lets suppose you get into an altercation or proximity of a known bad actor and have concerns. Someone offers you a small bump so you can take shifts. happens everyday to the homeless. Day to day problems are highly contextual (eg students taking adderall to cram similarly). Addictions evolve from innocent actions.
Homeless person. Coffee on the street at 3am every night, or hauling your...we'll say cart of stuff for simplicity; to some coffee shop, is not realistic.
Is the addiction much different from severe alcoholism? If not different, than my comment relatively accurately describes the logic. I've seen many hopeless alcoholics.
It's funny, because every homeless person I've seen carries a coffee pot with them.... but I've never once seen someone able to buy meth on a city street corner at night.
There's room for both your gf and the op to be right and wrong because the system isn't a one way path of causality, it's a repeated game with lots of feedback loops. I would say of course higher housing costs increase homelessness, of course a drug problem gets worse or gets started when one becomes homeless, of course drug addicted homeless go to where it's the easiest to be drug addicted homeless, of course increasing homeless spending will increase a certain subset of homeless,etc.
