>Cut and dry to whom? I think it's pretty cut and dry to people who pay attention to what fuels a modern economy: semiconductors. If you have a problem with th

>Cut and dry to whom? I think it's pretty cut and dry to people who pay attention to what fuels a modern economy: semiconductors. If you have a problem with the subsidies themselves that's a disagreement about implementation, and to an extent I would agree that some additional tariffs are in order - beyond the subsidies. >Free lunch for students is hardly an attempt to "solve poverty". Well sure, but any time someone disagrees with the policy of "free lunches" (as if there was such a thing) you get asked "what, do you hate poor people"? Which sends you down a spiral of debate on what the appropriate policy should be to solve a complex problem ... like poverty. >the only difference you're asserting is that a nationalistic defense ideology should be taken for granted and perhaps that it is popular. I'm asserting that semiconductors are what make things comfortable in modern society, which isn't really a contested point as far as I'm aware. I'm not really making any commentary on the wisdom of a "nationalistic defense ideology", which in my mind would be something quite different and go much further than "subsidies for building chips in the US". I'm sensing that a lot of the hostility in this thread has to do with how we already spend so much money on the MIC, and while it's true that we do spend a lot of money on the MIC, semiconductors are markedly different, because military hardware and weapons aren't consumer products. Semiconductors go into everything. I feel like I'm repeating myself here, and it seems odd to me because I would've expected folks on this website to understand this.