[Updated] TSMC Reportedly to build US Foundries

[Pickles von Brine]

Quote

Much of Intel’s manufacturing capability is already in the United States, but a new TSMC foundry would be that company’s first US installation. TSMC’s interest in building a US plant is supposedly related to its relationship with Apple. TSMC has confirmed that it is interested in building an overseas plant but has said nothing about the location. Intel, in contrast, has been more forthcoming.

 

“We’re very serious about this,” Greg Slater, Intel’s vice president of policy and technical affairs, told the Wall Street Journal. “We think it’s a good opportunity. The timing is better and the demand for this is greater than it has been in the past, even from the commercial side.”

 

That’s not a surprising attitude for Intel to take. The company has been capacity crunched for the last few years. Back in 2014, Intel made the decision to delay finishing Fab 42 in Chandler, Arizona. While this didn’t initially cause any problems, it would later compound the company’s manufacturing shortage from 2019 – 2020. Intel was unable to manufacture enough CPUs to meet 100 percent of market demand because its 10nm transition stalled out while demand for higher core-count 14nm CPUs jumped dramatically. Intel has restarted work on Fab 42, but demand for the company’s largest-core CPUs has been rising steadily.

Source

Hm... A possible joint venture between Intel and TSMC to open a fab here in the US. Definitely will bring jobs and whatnot, but what are the true motives behind it? Likely policy changes related to the US (avoid politics here). Either way, definitely could be a lot of good coming out of this. Intel increases their fabrication ability, TSMC gets a foothold here in the US, and Intel gets a bargining chip with TSMC for possible future projects. At least that is what I think.


So, found this on TechPowerUp. 

May not actually be a thing anymore:

Quote

Thanks to the report of DigiTimes, TSMC has confirmed that they have resisted requests from the US government, and will not build a Fab on US soil for the government. They haven't dismissed the possibility of building one or silicon manufacturing facilities in the US completely. TSMC chairman Mark Liu has told DigiTimes previously that if the company wants to build a US Fab, it will do so because of consumer demand, not the government demand. And that is understandable. It is much easier to work with regular customers compared to the US government which would force a company to go through rigorous security levels to deliver chips.

Source


Well, this story seems to get wishywashy

 

Quote

A new report today from the Wall Street Journal reiterates that Apple supplier TSMC is in negotiations to build a multibillion-dollar manufacturing plant in Arizona. This follows up its original report from earlier this week, with today’s report adding that an announcement could be made this week.

 

TSMC manufactures Apple’s A-series chips used in the iPhone and iPad — and soon to be used in the Mac lineup. For example, the upcoming iPhone 12 series will use Apple’s A14 processor, built on a 5-nanometer process by TSMC.

TSMC is reportedly in talks with the Trump administration over a potential deal. Any such agreement could materialize in a factory producing chips by the end of 2023 at the earliest. The announcement could be made as soon as Friday, the report says:

TSMC is expected to announce the plans as soon as Friday after making the decision at a board meeting on Tuesday in Taiwan, according to people familiar with the matter. The factory could be producing chips by the end of 2023 at the earliest, they said, adding that both the State and Commerce Departments are involved in the plans.

Source

[tarfeef101]

I can speak from my experience working @ Intel with the dedicated graphics team (but no knowledge of this situation):

One potential benefit would be speeding up engineering tasks. A lot of the engineering teams are in North America, or at least not the same location(s) as Fabs are. Having them closer to home would save a lot of time shipping samples around during development, validation, debug, etc. I imagine cost and simplifying customs is also a factor. 

Ofc on the more public side of things, politics is definitely something. People love to insist everything should be done in their country, even if it would end up increasing costs (not sure about just silicon fabrication, but a lot of the electronics supply chain is overseas, for example). So they'd get some good press from politicians, US customers, etc. It also hedges some risk in case the U.S. trade policies get worse for trade, and the fact that tariffs already exist means potentially higher supply chain and labour costs are offset by the increased cost of doing business in places facing tariffs. 

[Shreyas1]

4 minutes ago, tarfeef101 said:

 People love to insist everything should be done in their country, even if it would end up increasing costs (not sure about just silicon fabrication, but a lot of the electronics supply chain is overseas, for example).

Would it increase costs? Idk much about economics, but if a company is moving some of their production here, wouldn't it mean that production would be cheaper for them?

[StDragon]

6 minutes ago, tarfeef101 said:

Ofc on the more public side of things, politics is definitely something. People love to insist everything should be done in their country...

I'm sure it's more of national security.

 

Riddle me this - Which big nation dreams of "reclaiming" a long lost island? And there's your answer.

[tarfeef101]

4 minutes ago, Shreyas1 said:

Would it increase costs? Idk much about economics, but if a company is moving some of their production here, wouldn't it mean that production would be cheaper for them?

No, and some reasons aside from cost (i.e. politics, press, etc.) were given. 

The simplest answers about why costs are likely lower overseas are:
1) Labour. The U.S. has a higher minimum wage than many other countries, and moreover, many workers aren't even willing to work for minimum wage (look at jobs like farm workers, nannies, etc. that are often filled by foreign workers because U.S. workers don't want to do them).

2) Supply chain. As stated, I cannot promise this applies specifically to semiconductor manufacturing, but in broader electronics, it is cheap to manufacture in say, east asia. This is because many of the raw materials and base components are found there, so being close to those companies saves a lot of time and money.

[Taf the Ghost]

10 minutes ago, tarfeef101 said:

I can speak from my experience working @ Intel with the dedicated graphics team (but no knowledge of this situation):

One potential benefit would be speeding up engineering tasks. A lot of the engineering teams are in North America, or at least not the same location(s) as Fabs are. Having them closer to home would save a lot of time shipping samples around during development, validation, debug, etc. I imagine cost and simplifying customs is also a factor. 

Ofc on the more public side of things, politics is definitely something. People love to insist everything should be done in their country, even if it would end up increasing costs (not sure about just silicon fabrication, but a lot of the electronics supply chain is overseas, for example). So they'd get some good press from politicians, US customers, etc. It also hedges some risk in case the U.S. trade policies get worse for trade, and the fact that tariffs already exist means potentially higher supply chain and labour costs are offset by the increased cost of doing business in places facing tariffs. 

Economics would work out. US already has massive Fab Capacity, so all of the secondary supply chain is available. Intel, TI, Samsung and GloFo all have leading or near-leading edge nodes in the USA.

 

The issue is really Apple, with TSMC practically being a division of Apple, at this point, so it would bring nearly all production available to be on the States. For TSMC, it would also open them up to getting large US Military and US Government contracts that they currently don't have. This is also probably a shot at Intel for being bad at getting nodes out lately and complaints from National Security factions.

[Taf the Ghost]

2 minutes ago, tarfeef101 said:

No, and some reasons aside from cost (i.e. politics, press, etc.) were given. 

The simplest answers about why costs are likely lower overseas are:
1) Labour. The U.S. has a higher minimum wage than many other countries, and moreover, many workers aren't even willing to work for minimum wage (look at jobs like farm workers, nannies, etc. that are often filled by foreign workers because U.S. workers don't want to do them).

2) Supply chain. As stated, I cannot promise this applies specifically to semiconductor manufacturing, but in broader electronics, it is cheap to manufacture in say, east asia. This is because many of the raw materials and base components are found there, so being close to those companies saves a lot of time and money.

Not to get into it the politics of it, but the bolded part is fundamentally false & its been disproven consistently. The jobs aren't filled by US citizens because the companies use foreign employees to drive wages below what anything else in the area is paying. What you're repeating is a Wall Street Fake News talking point designed to make their balance sheets look better at a cost to the US Taxpayer and honest businesses.

 

The Fab Industry would basically have no one making near minimum wage, even the cleaning crews. It's mostly high-end technical staff after the high-end construction phase is done. So the staffing cost savings would be in offloading wages into tax structures (that's actually what Universal Healthcare does for a business) and the fact that TSMC has a monopoly on those positions in Taiwan, letting them set wages. One of the big reasons companies loved to out-source to Asia. Wages are easy to keep low when you don't have to compete properly and the countries make their currency artificially less valuable.

[tarfeef101]

Just now, Taf the Ghost said:

Not to get into it the politics of it, but the bolded part is fundamentally false & its been disproven consistently. The jobs aren't filled by US citizens because the companies use foreign employees to drive wages below what anything else in the area is paying. What you're repeating is a Wall Street Fake News talking point designed to make their balance sheets look better at a cost to the US Taxpayer and honest businesses.

 

The Fab Industry would basically have no one making near minimum wage, even the cleaning crews. It's mostly high-end technical staff after the high-end construction phase is done. So the staffing cost savings would be in offloading wages into tax structures (that's actually what Universal Healthcare does for a business) and the fact that TSMC has a monopoly on those positions in Taiwan, letting them set wages. One of the big reasons companies loved to out-source to Asia. Wages are easy to keep low when you don't have to compete properly and the countries make their currency artificially less valuable.

Disclaimer: I'm not gonna respond again because frankly the way that first paragraph was written was enough to tell me this isn't going to go anywhere.

 

No, it is not. Americans are completely capable of working for low wages like foreign workers do. If Americans were not inferior (which I hope they aren't), and also were willing to work for the same wage, they'd get hired. It is much cheaper and easier to hire Americans to work in America than anyone else. The fact that this doesn't happen is all the proof needed to make my point. "using foreign employees to drive wages down" is just another way of saying "others are willing to work for less than Americans are". Which is my point.

 

Yes, most fab employees do not make minimum wage. However, you may notice that across the world, there is a correlation between the minimum wage, average wage, and the wages paid for seemingly equivalent positions in different countries. If I took a job with the same roles and responsibilities in most countries other than the U.S. or Canada (and even between those two there is a discrepancy), my pay would go down significantly. This same effect will impact costs of hiring fab workers, regardless as to whether or not they earn minimum wage or not.

 

 

 

As a sidenote, you should take some actual economics classes instead of wherever you get your information now. You're echoing stories I've seen on facebook and the like which really have no substance behind them at all. Even talking about wages & currency devaluation is so much more complex than you imply. If a central bank just prints a ton of money to lower the value of their currency, that doesn't just magically make everything cheap. Anything they want to import will cost more of that currency now. Internally, if you have a very powerful government, you can control prices and wages of internal companies, keeping the impact only to the import/export market. But that's next to impossible when the economy is so global, and that level of control is so difficult to obtain. This is a VERY simplistic analysis of the idea, and glosses over so many nuanced parts of it that make the situation end up being very different (and much less effective).

Anyways, I'm sure you'll not care at all about this, and I am not on a tech forum to get political, so bye!

[StDragon]

@tarfeef101 - Globalism is a monetary race to the bottom; by design! So much so that entire nations will purposefully devalue their own currency so as to increase exports. In addition automation is also a deflationary force in both the cost of labor and the goods it produces. The bad news is that is reduces wages. The good news is that it reduces prices on products and services. I'm not going to get into philosophical debate about it, just stating a basic fundamental econ 101 fact about it.

[Taf the Ghost]

29 minutes ago, tarfeef101 said:

Disclaimer: I'm not gonna respond again because frankly the way that first paragraph was written was enough to tell me this isn't going to go anywhere.

 

No, it is not. Americans are completely capable of working for low wages like foreign workers do. If Americans were not inferior (which I hope they aren't), and also were willing to work for the same wage, they'd get hired. It is much cheaper and easier to hire Americans to work in America than anyone else. The fact that this doesn't happen is all the proof needed to make my point. "using foreign employees to drive wages down" is just another way of saying "others are willing to work for less than Americans are". Which is my point.

 

Yes, most fab employees do not make minimum wage. However, you may notice that across the world, there is a correlation between the minimum wage, average wage, and the wages paid for seemingly equivalent positions in different countries. If I took a job with the same roles and responsibilities in most countries other than the U.S. or Canada (and even between those two there is a discrepancy), my pay would go down significantly. This same effect will impact costs of hiring fab workers, regardless as to whether or not they earn minimum wage or not.

 

 

 

As a sidenote, you should take some actual economics classes instead of wherever you get your information now. You're echoing stories I've seen on facebook and the like which really have no substance behind them at all. Even talking about wages & currency devaluation is so much more complex than you imply. If a central bank just prints a ton of money to lower the value of their currency, that doesn't just magically make everything cheap. Anything they want to import will cost more of that currency now. Internally, if you have a very powerful government, you can control prices and wages of internal companies, keeping the impact only to the import/export market. But that's next to impossible when the economy is so global, and that level of control is so difficult to obtain. This is a VERY simplistic analysis of the idea, and glosses over so many nuanced parts of it that make the situation end up being very different (and much less effective).

Anyways, I'm sure you'll not care at all about this, and I am not on a tech forum to get political, so bye!

Well, declaring defeat and running away is a brilliant strategy. Let me toss that into my book of "things not to do". I gave you an out in the first paragraph because it's a Talking Point repeated ad nauseum by the Media because their Corporate leadership supports wage suppression. But they keep repeating it so the Narrative sticks and people repeat the lie. That's the point of controlling a Narrative. What you clearly failed to understand is that the effect is extremely well studied because the point is to suppress wages as much as possible for the corporate structures.  The most fun is finding the journal articles with the hilariously obtuse titles that were actually contracted work to figure out the best way to suppress wages in certain markets, though I've given up throwing journal article links at people these days (mostly as it devolves into arguing about titles the entire time).

 

Now, if we want to get into global wages for highly technical positions, then we have to get into the weeds of Purchasing Power Parity, relative value comparative to cost of living, relative value comparative to cost of compliance, relative value comparative of the cost of experiences and a number of other factors. The "whole nine yards" when it comes to valuing properly across currencies & locations. (And what kicked off the "You should really take a position in Brazil" thing a few years ago.) Which is why you failed to realize where most of the Fabs in the USA are. Minus the historic ones, they're in places with very low Land Costs, which (aside from tax structures) is the leading driver of cost of living. There's a reason a TSMC Fab would end up around the Austin, TX area, and for generally the same reason that Samsung has a massive Fab there. There's a reason most of the USA has the lowest Cost of Living of modern economies. LA, San Fran & NYC are terrible, but the rest of the country lives great because of those lower costs. 

 

And, since we're here already, I wasn't implying anything; I was giving a short point about the reality that "[w]ages are easy to keep low when you don't have to compete properly and the countries make their currency artificially less valuable." If we want to get into the actual mechanics of how a currency is manipulated on the different time-scales, from the micro-second to the decade, that's a bit beyond the scope of the forum, but every country controls their currency to meet the objects of the stakeholders of the Central Bank. As a result, since those stakeholders are also in control of the major companies in a country, it is easier to suppress wages when you can artificially devalue the "unit of labor" of a worker in a country through exchange rates. When added together with monopolistic or collusive situation, wages get dictated rather than competed. 

 

Now the really fun weeds is trying to get people's minds wrapped about China actually flipped position from undervalued to overvalued a number of years ago. The exact point it happened is a bit up for debate, but it's been their policy for quite a while. They do it for a fairly large collection of reasons, but it's also what's caused a lot of the opportunities to move work (technical & production) to places other than China. Part of why TSMC is open to setting up US-based Fabs, as there's no real additive value from adding more than trailing edge Fabs in China itself. (TSMC has a large collection of Fabs in China, but their leading nodes are mostly in Taiwan.) And, even then, apart from wages, a Texas fab should have the lowest fixed costs of any of their fabs given taxes, water and electricity costs there.

 

I checked you on the Americans "often filled by foreign workers because U.S. workers don't want to do them" Talking Point because it's a Narrative spun endlessly by US-based Media that gets repeated outside of the USA. The point of such Narratives, along with not allowing counter-points to it in the Media, is to create the constant situation where the "safe" intellectual position is to repeat that Talking Point. However, aside from being factually incorrect though narratively safe, when repeated by a non-American, it's vaguely racist & thus against Forum Rules, but I understand nearly everyone will stay within the safe narratives if they actually don't understand a topic. It's human nature and a practical choice. What isn't a wise move is to take shots at a ghost. Aside from having nothing to hit, you really have no idea what might haunt you in return for the bit of levity you provided.

[spartaman64]

16 hours ago, StDragon said:

@tarfeef101 - Globalism is a monetary race to the bottom; by design! So much so that entire nations will purposefully devalue their own currency so as to increase exports. In addition automation is also a deflationary force in both the cost of labor and the goods it produces. The bad news is that is reduces wages. The good news is that it reduces prices on products and services. I'm not going to get into philosophical debate about it, just stating a basic fundamental econ 101 fact about it.

 

15 hours ago, Taf the Ghost said:

snip

theres also just not enough workers in the US to fill those jobs. before the virus the unemployment rate in the US was 3.6% thats lower than the 5% needed to be considered a fully employed economy. you think if a company bring back a bunch of minimum wage jobs there would be people rushing to fill them? probably not

[CarlBar]

16 hours ago, Taf the Ghost said:

I checked you on the Americans "often filled by foreign workers because U.S. workers don't want to do them" Talking Point because it's a Narrative spun endlessly by US-based Media that gets repeated outside of the USA. The point of such Narratives, along with not allowing counter-points to it in the Media, is to create the constant situation where the "safe" intellectual position is to repeat that Talking Point. However, aside from being factually incorrect though narratively safe, when repeated by a non-American, it's vaguely racist & thus against Forum Rules, but I understand nearly everyone will stay within the safe narratives if they actually don't understand a topic. It's human nature and a practical choice. What isn't a wise move is to take shots at a ghost. Aside from having nothing to hit, you really have no idea what might haunt you in return for the bit of levity you provided.

 

You might want to do your own digging, this isn't just a narrative in parts of the uk or (reportedly i've heard of less in the way of hard data on this), in europe. Actual academic studies have been done that shows that yes foreign immigrant workers will generally accept a lower wage for a job than native britons, (or immigrants from wealthier countries). it's technically illegal in many cases because it involves the workers being paid way under the minimum wage, (there's been several huge scandals about it, wit it most famously coming into public view when a whole bunch of beach combers drowned a decade or so back prompting an investigation into conditions at the company employing them).

 

Thats not to say it's true of all immigrant workers, or even that they're sealing jobs. But it is true there's a significant number of immigrant workers who will work for less than their non-immigrant, (or other migrant), worker groups. It's technically horribly illegal of course, (which is one reason it tends not to work so well with native workers or immigrants from some other locales, they have a much stronger ingrained tendency to stand up for their basic worker rights), but since the workers won;t report them it goes on a lot coming to light in various ways every few years.

[Taf the Ghost]

6 minutes ago, CarlBar said:

 

You might want to do your own digging, this isn't just a narrative in parts of the uk or (reportedly i've heard of less in the way of hard data on this), in europe. Actual academic studies have been done that shows that yes foreign immigrant workers will generally accept a lower wage for a job than native britons, (or immigrants from wealthier countries). it's technically illegal in many cases because it involves the workers being paid way under the minimum wage, (there's been several huge scandals about it, wit it most famously coming into public view when a whole bunch of beach combers drowned a decade or so back prompting an investigation into conditions at the company employing them).

 

Thats not to say it's true of all immigrant workers, or even that they're sealing jobs. But it is true there's a significant number of immigrant workers who will work for less than their non-immigrant, (or other migrant), worker groups. It's technically horribly illegal of course, (which is one reason it tends not to work so well with native workers or immigrants from some other locales, they have a much stronger ingrained tendency to stand up for their basic worker rights), but since the workers won;t report them it goes on a lot coming to light in various ways every few years.

It goes a lot deeper than that, and what catches most people off guard is their utter lack of understanding of Taxes. Businesses look at employees a few ways, but when you're at the lower-bounds the actual Cost Per Hour really matters. (Especially at the lower-end, as they're a Input-Output type of job calculation, normally.) 

 

For ease of explanation, let's say the wage floor is 10EUR per hour. That's what the employee sees; for the employer, depending on where, you're looking their actual cost is between 13 to 18 EUR per hour. That means under-the-table for 10EUR would save the employer a lot of money, as a start. If they paid 2 illegal employees at 9EUR an hour, that's the cost of a single employee that's a citizen. Locals can't compete, at all. This is the issue in a lot of US markets, and the reason immigration is a huge political issue.

 

Let's say they are paying above-board, so the pricing differential doesn't exist. Where does that cause a lot of problems? Well, why are we assuming the work was only worth 10EUR per hour? If they didn't have access to employees that will take legal but below market wages, suddenly the Market Wage shows up and they have to pay what the work is actually worth. This is what happens whenever the US Government decides to randomly enforce immigration policy. Suddenly a bunch of Americans will do the job for the actual Wage it should pay. Employment markets are still competitive, after all.

 

There's a super-ugly side issue to this that revolves around Power Over People. Part of the utility of immigrant employees is the fact the employer can abuse them in ways they could never with a citizen. All of those "basic rights" and stuff, you know? They don't put up with it because they're weak individuals; they put up with it because the loss of the job is worse. There's a reason Indentured Servitude is banned in what we call the "modern world" and there's a reason for that. 

 

To address @spartaman64's point and tie it in, "Minimum Wage" is also a Talking Point. They're Wage Floors and act as such. They only produce Negative Economic effects, but they can serve a legal safety net, if set far enough below the prevailing wage of the time. They force Work for Economic Gain to not be done, which is what is always lost on everyone. It makes for good Optics for the chattering class, but the economic effects are always utterly predictable in what they'll do. Also well studied, but since it's anti-Progressive at the moment, it's not narratively safe to point out how Wage Floors hurt everyone. (They're racist -- in any non-homogeneous country -- and extremely Ableist, with the US ones all but eliminating most of the jobs for those with minor mental issues in the last 20 years.) 

 

Companies open up locations with positions for jobs at the Wage Floor all of the time. Employment pools, for a large nation, are actually quite flexible. With the recovery from 2008 looking much stronger than it was because the pool of people looking for work shrank by several % of the total population, at least for the USA. Which is also why Immigration is such a political hot potato. No modern economy actually needs any Net Migration, and a lot of places would be better off if they dealt with their issues for why everyone wants to leave.

[williamcll]

The market is going to have a fun time when the guaranteed worker unions in the states start complaining.

[pas008]

doubt is high on tsmc opening in us

 

wasnt foxconn suppose to have a plant in wisconsin already?

[spartaman64]

21 minutes ago, Taf the Ghost said:

To address @spartaman64's point and tie it in, "Minimum Wage" is also a Talking Point. They're Wage Floors and act as such. They only produce Negative Economic effects, but they can serve a legal safety net, if set far enough below the prevailing wage of the time. They force Work for Economic Gain to not be done, which is what is always lost on everyone. It makes for good Optics for the chattering class, but the economic effects are always utterly predictable in what they'll do. Also well studied, but since it's anti-Progressive at the moment, it's not narratively safe to point out how Wage Floors hurt everyone. (They're racist -- in any non-homogeneous country -- and extremely Ableist, with the US ones all but eliminating most of the jobs for those with minor mental issues in the last 20 years.) 

 

Companies open up locations with positions for jobs at the Wage Floor all of the time. Employment pools, for a large nation, are actually quite flexible. With the recovery from 2008 looking much stronger than it was because the pool of people looking for work shrank by several % of the total population, at least for the USA. Which is also why Immigration is such a political hot potato. No modern economy actually needs any Net Migration, and a lot of places would be better off if they dealt with their issues for why everyone wants to leave.

my point has nothing to do with the minimum wage. ok so they bring back a bunch of jobs below minimum wage then even less people would want those jobs so whats your point? and you rather employers take advantage of people with mental issues by paying them scraps? the proper way to address that is by making laws against discriminatory hiring practices not by telling companies they can exploit those people as an incentive for hiring them. minimum wage is created for a reason and if you remove it then we are back to the practice of the industrial revolution era where people were worked half to death for pennies. also immigrants are beneficial to the economy they are much more likely to be entrepreneurs since they are more willing to take risks than people born in the country. there are also many countries with aging populations and low birthrates like japan and germany that would benefit from immigrant workers helping support their older population. 

 

the minimum wage today is already not enough to live on and if you lower it even more then guess who needs to pick up the difference? the government unless you want people to be starving on the streets even though they have a full time job

[StDragon]

15 minutes ago, spartaman64 said:

the minimum wage today is already not enough to live on...

Just a small nit-pick. The minimum wage (at least in the US) was NEVER meant to be livable; not by a long shot. Now whether it should be (or not) is an entirely separate discussion. But anyways, just so you're aware of that fact.

[spartaman64]

2 minutes ago, StDragon said:

Just a small nit-pick. The minimum wage (at least in the US) was NEVER meant to be livable; not by a long shot. Now whether it should be (or not) is an entirely separate discussion. But anyways, just so you're aware of that fact.

except there are jobs that people are expected to live on that are minimum wage

[CarlBar]

In the Uk the NMW is calculated as sufficient to allow someone working full time to support themselves and dependents off of. Thats why it exists, to ensure someone working a full time job can live off their work.

[StDragon]

24 minutes ago, spartaman64 said:

except there are jobs that people are expected to live on that are minimum wage

Valid point, sure. But it's always been known that minimum wage was supplemental income. That's not to say a bunch of minimum wage earners couldn't pool their resources to live under one roof, because many do. But just to be clear, entry level jobs are meant to be just that, entry level; at stepping stone of sort along a career path that will pay substantially more in the years to follow.

[tarfeef101]

Since this has brought in multiple responses from many people, and thankfully not much in the way of conspiracy theories about the media lying to you, etc. I don't mind tossing this in:

1) There is no such thing as a below-market wage. The lowest price 2 parties are willing to agree on (that is available) is the market value. That's literally the definition. 

 

2) While technically, yes, I don't live in the U.S., I can speak to this issue in a few ways. First, I did live there for a while, and I observed both people qualified for positions with no job, and a desire for one, and employers who needed employees that couldn't pay them enough to work so they sought workers from overseas. I do live in Canada, though, and I can say this exact issue has been in the public eye a lot recently. We have serious labour shortages on farms despite very high unemployment. Why? Foreign workers usually do those jobs, and can't come in because borders are shut down. However, Canadians aren't taking those jobs. So much that some members of government want to lock emergency benefits behind people proving they have tried to take jobs, and even creating matching services for people and those farms to force Canadians to go work there. This is irrefutable, and I'm sure is similar to issues faced elsewhere, like what I anecdotally observed during my time in the states.

 

3) Yes, minimum wage, tariffs, production subsidies, etc. are all inefficient in regards to total economic activity. Yet, we accept them as societies for a few reasons:

- Minimum wage places a base value on people's time to protect the desperate and those in low-skill jobs that are easily "replaceable". Sometimes, they are circumvented through exceptions for specific sectors, job types, etc (see: restaurant jobs where tipping is used as an excuse to lower wages). Personally, I think that's pretty dumb, and if you have a base value of human labour, there should be no exceptions to it. As for if it should be a "livable wage", the question I ask is this: is the most basic labour something society deems as a "legit job"? Do you think a job that a high school kid could do part-time with minimal training, or a dropout could just do full time should reward them with enough money to live an independent life? That's a personal opinion everyone has to decide for themselves. From observation, though, it seems most people who create the policy don't seem to think so, given the constant attestations about how minimum wage is insufficient for independent living.

- Tariffs: I don't like these. They're quite inefficient, and they make the consumers in the implementing country pay for them. I guess the only time they really make sense is when they're basically just an excise tax on premium goods that the general masses (who *theoretically* control policy in a democracy) deem as "being okay to make more expensive", and hope that indirectly encouraging the domestic production of will benefit more people than it hurts, and distribute money from the wealthy buying those goods (who can afford to "take the hit") to lower-class workers who would gain jobs and/or better pay.

- Production subsidies, import restrictions, and other similar policies: These often manifest to protect domestic industries, even if inherently noncompetitive. For example, many countries use these (or similar) tools to ensure some basic level of food production will exist in their country, even if their land is arid and climate uncooperative. This is usually done to protect the food supply in the case of wars, pandemics, etc. Right now, we can see the potential value in this. If countries artificially supported local production of PPE, for example, COVID-19 would have been easier to manage.

[StDragon]

52 minutes ago, tarfeef101 said:

We have serious labour shortages on farms despite very high unemployment. Why? Foreign workers usually do those jobs, and can't come in because borders are shut down. However, Canadians aren't taking those jobs. So much that some members of government want to lock emergency benefits behind people proving they have tried to take jobs, and even creating matching services for people and those farms to force Canadians to go work there. This is irrefutable, and I'm sure is similar to issues faced elsewhere, like what I anecdotally observed during my time in the states.

What you're seeing is cultural now. I say that because it didn't used to always the case. Just ask anyone that's 65+ years old. They'll tell you of stories of how they did farming during the summertime as part time work; even when going to college too. But cheap labor occurred from mass immigration and thus it created a quasi caste society of which group would be willing to do what work. But when the rubber meets the road, anyone will work for any job just to pay the bills and put food on the table.

 

You should look up Mike Rowe goes over this extensively to the point of creating a foundation in regards to work ethic. It's not just about America, but IMHO Western Civilization as a whole. We used to build things among the solid middle-class.

[Pickles von Brine]

Updated more details from another source. God this story keeps getting wishy washy. 

[Rolling2405]

On 5/12/2020 at 2:21 PM, Pickles - Lord of the Jar said:

TSMC to open a fab here in the US.

I thought they already had a fab or something here in the US already?

[Rolling2405]

I was right WaferTech L.L.C Fab 11

https://www.tsmc.com/english/contact_us.htm#TSMC_fabs