TSMC is paying around $23/hour to manufacturing technicians in Arizona. They’re also sending people to Taiwan to get trained and apparently it’s brutal enough that most people drop out of the program.
Asianometry did a video on this recently: https://youtu.be/Nk-lBok9_TU
That’s wild. For something that requires a trip to Taiwan for training, which I imagine makes it not an easy job, why does it pay so little? I’d think retention would be important if the training is that intensive.
Ha, ha, ha. No.
Let's see, from Wikipedia. 2022 data:
- Number of employees: 73,090
- Net income: US$27.67 billion
Which gives us: 27.67e9/73090 = 369,407.57
So, just looking at their net income (which already takes into account the salary costs of said employees), they could afford to pay every employee US $370,000 a year before being unprofitable.
Between US $50,000 and US $370,000 there is quite some margin for improvement. And clearly, the low wages they pay have nothing to do with the risk of being unprofitable.
You've presented historical data to counter the of argument that wage/salary growth MAY lead to potential unprofitability solely on the basis of one year's profit numbers. That's literally driving forward looking in the rearview mirror because it says very little about how profitable the company would be if it raised wages/salaries. At best it may be a first order approximation of how profitable the company would have been in 2022, if it paid people more then. However, even for 2022 the calculation isn't as simple as dividing the profit by the number of employees and keeping the company profitable.
Plus, they can only eat so much pizza. Having more of them switching to pizza making would not necessarily raise their wages, i.e. a glut of pizza makers should depress pizza making wages.
but yeah, most of my coworkers had a hard time doing it sober
The PRC had the supply chain from the bottom up (to some extent funded by the western consumers and corporations), whereas the US is trying to get reindustrializd from the top down, without first building a solid fundamental. To make the tough jobs easy, you must have the easy jobs done well first.
Rebuilding is a chicken and egg problem, but it’s not as hard as defeating the axis powers in WWII. If this country has the Will to do something, it’s gunna get done.
Building a profitable industrial chain is significantly harder to do and much rarer to achieve. The US certainly has the people to do it, but it isn't clear that the political trade-offs will be acceptable.
This doesn't make sense, Intel did and still does most of its manufacturing in the US, didn't it? (See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Intel_manufacturing_si...) I assume the thing that changed if there was a major loss of jobs was automation, not outsourcing. It's a lot easier to keep a clean room clean if you don't need to let people (with their hair and dead skin particles) in.
Their consumer and server business (read: low-nm) processes are largely international.
The wikipedia page you linked evinces this statement.
The phrase "most of its manufacturing" is a Simpson's Paradox statement. It's true, but not in a way that's interesting. High-nanometer processes are easier to automate.
First, it's worth noting that most of the <300nm fabs in the U.S. are really new. The Oregon facility was historically the most relevant fab, Arizona seems to be (potentially?) supplanting it from a design and capacity POV.
But the Israeli fab really shouldn't be discounted, they employ 12k people in Israel. I can't find numbers on production output, but that headcount is a similar OOM to the Oregon plant. Most of their successful, recent designs came from Israel, too. The Ireland fab employs 4.5k people. There's 22k in Oregon, unclear on the breakdown of manufacturing and R&D/non-manufacturing roles.
As I understand it from said rabbit hole, they do a lot of design and "proofing" manufacturing of low-nm processes in Oregon, but rely on Ireland and Israel to scale-up.
It seems that the recent (i.e. post-9/11) Arizona plants are more geared towards high-volume production. Regardless of what calculations went into those decisions, they're a hedge against political instability in Israel.
The only thing the region lacks is investment and ecosystem to attract and protect it.
South America could stand to learn a LOT from ASEAN -- stability = international investment = economic growth = happy people = stability.
In contrast, in South America inveterate bickering about politics dominates and you end up with something like this: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template:Supranational_Ameri...
I hope it sorts itself out! And I know Columbia and Brazil are developing some impressive technical industries, especially since they share North America timezones. But it should be honest about the headwinds.
[0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venezuelan_crisis_(disambigu...
How about asking the workers in other countries who benefitted from this transaction if they were happy with the arrangement? Or do only Americans matter? Maybe you think foreigners are fit only to till dirt fields as subsistence farmers?
I'm sure they were happy with the arrangement, they benefitted from it in the short-term. You should speak with Foxconn workers today, though. The story is more nuanced.
> Do only Americans matter?
This is a weird claim to bestow on my original post.
Labor conditions matter. The balance of power of power and profits between labor and capital matters.
I promise you, semiconductors did not move production to ${foreign_country} out of the goodness of their hearts, to better the living conditions of ${foreign_country}'s impoverished underclasses.
They did it because the balance of power (and profits) had shifted towards labor in this country in the 40s, 50s and 60s, and the population of ${foreign_country} was cheaper to exploit.
It's also worth pointing out (again) that a disproportionate of people in manufacturing in California semiconductor industry were 0th or 1st generation immigrants (from the Philippines, Mexico, China and so on) or internal refugees from the Jim Crow South who migrated to California for military work during WW II. These were people who were literally at most 1 generation removed from subsistence farming.
> Maybe you think foreigners are fit only to till dirt fields as subsistence farmers?
Again, a weird claim to stick me with.
Humans working in manufacturing should be free to negotiate living wages, safe and healthy working conditions, reasonable time off and retirement policies, illness/disability insurance, and so on.
The reason U.S. companies prefer "foreigners" (domestically and abroad) is not because foreigners don't deserve these things as much as any other person, it's because they know they can get away with exploiting them for a few decades before they develop class consciousness.
In the last few years, workers in China have been striking to demand what workers in California fought hard for 70-80 years ago.
Entirely coincidentally, Foxconn began "diversifying" its manufacturing capacity into India and other countries. Do you think it's because they want to help uplift people from subsistence farming? :)
Those workers could get the job done just the same without the overhead of labor unions, and this person still thinks that the 'cheapness' means that organized labor is magically better.
You won't get an earnest answer though. Perhaps some nonsense about how these workers would be even better off with organized labor (until their jobs move to the next, cheaper bidder, of course).
This is the same tired argument that was made when the US pushed these jobs off the continent - if the very low wage jobs are allowed exist; eventually enough wealth will be generated that nobody needs to do them. Those sweatshops are in fact a path to prosperity. In some sense it is a cosmic win that all the capital was developed in Asia because they needed it more, but that probably wasn't the sort of charity that policymakers intended at the time.
I think you may be undermining what slavery was .
I have met folks who work in workshops in India that export stuff to USA and other developed nations. Those workers make a whole lot more money than their neighbors who produce for the domestic market and they have better working conditions. Their overall quality of life, while nowhere close to G8 standards, is so much better. And their community benefits from their increased wages.
Which is coincidentally quite similar to the treatment of North Korean and Chinese penal workers. Russian labor camps are pretty far up there too.
Many Foxconn factories have armed guards, but it's not to keep people out...
The engines of capitalism only look 1 quarter ahead. And the politicians who support them only look up to the next election. Unless you are majority or largely controlled by your founders, who care about building a good legacy.
That is, if your industry is tuned in to the investment climate, the things being pursued match the things that people are saying "will make the country great", and are backed up by legislation and financing deals.
In the previous era, the US was focused on a deindustrializing narrative: the things that made America great were "clean, high-tech" industry, high graduation rates and four-year degrees, and an outsourced empire that brought sprawling supply chains together "just in time".
The new model has brought back the industry, so it needs an emphasis on concrete job skills, versus academic credentialing. It's in-sourced so the supply chain has started in on a radical shift. It emphasizes new energy sources with few foreign dependencies, moving the geopolitical stance towards isolation. The approach to the national balance sheet also has to change, but precisely how lacks for consensus.
Like with the previous shifts there were some reasons to take the narrative in a certain direction: late 60's America had many environmental concerns, and fell into an energy crunch in the next decade. "Smart bombing" the Middle East to secure oil supplies brought together the national industries towards a common goal, and the money supply got a reset early on with the end of Bretton-Woods, that helped propel the Boomer generation towards homes-and-families participation within the system.
Today we're still putting together the pieces of that narrative, but it's central to the political climate: the old two-party system is focused on exhausted narratives that don't actually excite ordinary people to vote. Therefore the candidates are rushing to put together platforms that rewrite the script and mobilize new demographics.
There have been many historical examples of benevolent dictators. I can't think of any in modern history. Xi certainly isn't, and never was.
Democracy can avoid the problem of dictatorial systems by allowing the people the ability to get rid of bad rulers, at the expense of usually getting crappy rulers who only focus on the next election cycle, and frequently getting sociopathic narcissists in power.
The problem wasn't these rulers, it was what happened after they got old and died and their shitty kids replaced them.
As opposed to what, something like this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_Pests_campaign?
There are more considerations than just profits. Consider how domestic PPE plants closed down in the US because even US gov institutions wanted the cheapest product, and went overseas. Then when COVID hit, we had no local supplier for PPE.
The tax payer had nothing to do with it. This is yet another example of the government taking our money (or borrowing our future money) and spending it in ways that we never agreed to and had no input on.
You don't vote in local, congressional, and presidential elections?
Maybe they do exist, but I don't remember it coming up.
Also to clarify, local elections wouldn't have helped here. Congressional and presidential elections are a different beast, The Machine (reference to the University of Alabama) heavily influences elections and elected officials. I do vote, but I have little faith that such a massive and heavily funded political system allows my vote to count for more than winning a seat. I've been regularly disappointed by those I've voted for when they inevitably ignore or break promises they campaigned on and make decisions that often fly in the face of the very principles they originally claimed to stand for.
Fixing our education system is a lot bigger problem then we've ever been able to tackle as a country by popular initiatives.
I don't think anyone would agree that those two are the best candidates this country has to offer, and most people I've talked to about the election feel stuck picking between which one is less bad.
That said, my point was that the tax payer isn't really paying for it when the tax payer has no say in what is being paid for. If the taxes are collected either under false pretense, or no pretense at all, for what the money will be spent on then the citizen is only responsible for paying the tax bill. The money is the government's at that point, and responsibility for how it is spent at that point stops at their desks.
If the tax payer were truly the one paying for this, we would at minimum have a voice in the program. At best, the government would propose the plan and leave it up to the tax payers to fund it in almost a kick starter type of approach. A simple vote would make more sense IMO, but if we are to pay for it with tax dollars and the government refuses to run a surplus, tax payers (should) have to kick in more money to pay for it.
However, eventually, the buck stops at the taxpayer.
Yes, the federal gov't issues bonds to finance their activities (i.e. deficit spending), but the creditworthiness of the U.S. is intrinsically supported by the federal government's capacity to collect taxes from its citizens.
Eventually, "we the people" foots the bill. It might be amortized over decades and deferred more years still, but it's still a debit to "we the people" of $8.5B in the ledger.
I'm no sure what would happen economically if we paid off federal debt in any meaningful amount. I'd be really curious if you have any insights into what that would look like.
They closed because it was cheaper to build in other countries, or to outsource from contractors who build in other countries (where organized labor doesn't exist). The U.S. lost thousands of high-paying (and tax-paying) labor positions and atrophied the skills that went with them. Intel profited from it.
These people were disproportionately minorities, disproportionately well-represented by unions, and had made a lot of progress in improving their working conditions re: use of terribly corrosive chemicals. All of that backslid when labor went off-shore.
Now, the taxpayer has to pay Intel $8.5B to bring back manufacturing capacity to the U.S.; nice job, if you can get it. It'll be really interesting to see who takes these jobs, and how quickly we can rebuild the muscles that Intel shareholders profited from decomposing.