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It remains to be seen if shifting the cost to taxpayers is harmful to the economy or not.
by scottcodie 5y ago
It remains to be seen if shifting the cost to taxpayers is harmful to the economy or not.
- SQueeeeeL 5y agoHacker news comment of the year
- eigenman 5y ago...but it will almost certainly hurt the taxpayers as a whole.
- scottcodie 5y agoNot necessarily. Let's review our options: regulate companies to account for every disaster scenario, let the government plan and provide assistance during disaster scenarios, or do nothing and let people suffer and let companies go bankrupt. Passing costs to the taxpayers isn't the worst option.
- mmrezaie 5y agoBad logic. If the governance e.g., TA is not manipulating market e.g. giving this sort of subsidies in case of failure then market could find the right place. Instead of behind the scene talks, a measurable study would be done and then fabs would be finding a suitable place to establish. I am not saying Samsung has not done studies on the location. Just pointing out the fallacy in the dangerous logic.
- scottcodie 5y agoThat's a lot of what-ifs with the assumption of corruption. There is no fundamental reason why companies and the government can't cooperate for mutual benefit.
- eigenman 5y agoThere’s plenty of precedent for corruption with respect to tax incentives, see, e.g., what Foxconn did in Wisconsin: https://www.theverge.com/21507966/foxconn-empty-factories-wisconsin-jobs-loophole-trump https://www.theverge.com/21507966/foxconn-empty-factories-wi... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foxconn_in_Wisconsin?wprov=sfti1 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foxconn_in_Wisconsin?wprov=sft...
- scottcodie 5y agoI'm sorry, am I missing some sort of evidence of corruption for the Samsung plant? Is that a serious accusation?
- aspenmayer 5y agoEvidence of corruption in Samsung itself is not hard to find. Absence of evidence of corruption in this specific case is not evidence of corruption’s absence. I remain skeptical of the terms of the deal either way.
- bradknowles 5y agoEvidence of corruption in ERCOT is not hard to find. It would be much harder to find evidence of fair dealing from ERCOT.
- dnautics 5y agoeven if it's corrupt, although it's rare, sometimes corruption does serve the public interest, even if by total accident of competence.
- aspenmayer 5y agoCorruption as a least-bad alternative is not much of an endorsement, and likely isn’t a good investment of public expenditures.
- BeFlatXIII 5y agoLetting companies go bankrupt is a good thing. Letting people suffer without power is not.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- beezle 5y agoCrony capitalism, the best kind of capitalism eh?
- grayfaced 5y agoThe ONLY reason to care about the "economy" is the secondary benefit it provides the "taxpayers". The health of economy and the people should never be weighed against each other.
- scottcodie 5y agoSure, lets analyze who benefits. The US benefits from national security by having a semiconductor plant in the US. The local economy benefits in Taylor Texas. Companies benefit from having a close semiconductor plant. People benefit from low cost chips. I think you may be advocating for more welfare analysis, which I completely agree with.
- newbie789 5y agoThis is the funniest post I’ve seen on here in a long time. Cheers!