Listen to the CEO of Intel tell you all you need to know about oligarchy, corporate arrogance, and

[Uncle Joe]

Link to tweet

Link to tweet

Link to tweet

[KS Toronado]

1. Really love how Bernie goes after greedy people.

[whathehell]

15. Me too..I love Bernie!

I have 100% faith in him..Not that he can't make
mistakes, but that he's always coming from a good place.

[CurtEastPoint]

2. We surely need their products, but Mr. CEO, fuck you.

[Sky Jewels]

3. Thank you, Bernie.

Let's bring back the guillotines.

[JT45242]

4. Bernie's comments on Manchin might get him reported here

I whole heartedly agree with Bernie.

Corporations buy politicians because it's a net win. Hell, Manchin has pushed through legislation at state and federal level that have made his company tens of millions in profits.

Call out the greed. Call out the politicians on both sides of the aisle who take the dirty money if corporate overlords.

[calimary]

5. Hey, a great quote is a great quote.

That is all.

[Pepsidog]

6. Outrageous but so common from Intel to professional sports. Extort is all.

[WA-03 Democrat]

7. Bernie is wrong on this one

Semiconductor fabrication is an issue of national security. There is no economy without semiconductors. 80% of all of the world's entire output is from 2 countries - Taiwan and South Korea. TSMC and Samsung that's it. The US consumes more than 60% of the total output of semiconductors. The reason we made it through Covid was because of virtualization. Our soft spot is showing and we are up against the mob. Yes, I agree with President Biden. Pass this bill!

[relayerbob]

8. Absolute truth

As someone with a lifetime in the Semiconductor business, I absolutely agree. Why we allowed the IC industry to go to China is one of the biggest frustrations of my life. And in their defense, Intel has done more to keep IC manufacturing in the West than any other sompany, with fabs all over the US, Ireland, Israel and elsewhere. What they do in Asia has been mostly final assembly, not making the chips themselves. Thank AMD, Apple, etc. for handing it all off to TSMC.

[WA-03 Democrat]

10. Yep! The backend waffer

cutting and packaging is almost all done in China. The fab is just one part of the 18 month organic chemistry manufacturing process.

That Shanghai close down effected companies that did not even know they did business in China. I am now working on Geo-mitigation - which is a nice way to say where can we do this that is not China? I would contend that Taiwan-The Republic of China, while currently separate from the People's Republic of China will not stay that way forever and that is what this whole thing is about.

[relayerbob]

14. Yeah, relying on TSMC

Is a HUGE strategic blunder. They already have manufacturing ops in mainland China, which means that China has access to all the tech, no matter how we may want to prevent it.

I'm happy to see Intel's Ohio facility going up, and that will include backend, from what I understand (much of their packaging and assembly is done in Malaysia, although a fair amount is done in China also) , and if any company has a right to be speaking for the US chip building industry, it is Intel. Sanders is barking up the wrong tree.

[Fiendish Thingy]

13. The bulk of the credit/blame should go to the politicians who granted MFN status to China

That’s what opened the floodgates- granting China Most Favored Nation status for trade.

Started with Bill Clinton, made permanent by GWB.

[relayerbob]

16. Actually, that's not true.

I was there. We were off-shoring to the Far East long before that. MFN didn't happen intil 2000. It helped move it to China more rapidly, but that was more of an effect than a cause. However, despite this being the brainchild of the right, this is now a favorite talking point of the far right, so be careful. MFN doesn't give countries an advantage, it's the basis of trade relations with all countries.

Giving tax breaks to companies off-shoring their production, started under Reagan is the root cause, rather than incenting them to stay here.

[Fiendish Thingy]

17. MFN started in the 1980, and was made permanent in 2000

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Most_favoured_nation

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2018/06/normalizing-trade-relations-with-china-was-a-mistake/562403/

[KPN]

19. Yep, goes back to Reagan and then GHWB. Clinton just continued the trend as did his sucessors.

How do you incentivize them to stay here in the face of MFNs, free trade agreements and cheap foreign labor?

[relayerbob]

24. Almost every nation are MFN traders

Beyond that, you incent companies to stay put by giving them tax advantages to stay, not tax breaks to leave. Isolationism doesn't work, we have to work with other countries, but we don't have to pay our companies to go offshore to get cheap labor, we tax them the difference to make the labor coefficient roughly equivalent.

[relayerbob]

22. You do realize that nearly every nation has MFN status

This is just a right wing talking point

[relayerbob]

23. Off shoring didn't start with China

We were off shoring to Taiwan much sooner and TSMC is one direct result. We also sent tech to Malaysia, INdonesia, Singapore and many others. India got software and call centers because they spoke English.

Blaming China for all the ills of the country is just ridiculous.

[KPN]

21. National security was placed at risk by politicians past and is now being used to legitimize

rapacious profiteering. Apologistic rationales for such behavior do zero to correct the problem. Yeah, pass the bill, but also fix the profiteering problem. We can do both. In addition to defending the bill, do you have a solution to the larger,very real problem that Bernie hones in on that you can offer or support?

[FoxNewsSucks]

26. No, he's absolutely right.

He's talking about corporate greed and extortion.

Your points are true, but not complete. I'd also consider it national security to be able to make everything we need in this country and pay employees enough to have decent lives while making it. But that is a separate issue from what Sanders raises in the video.

Any company who got tax breaks to move jobs overseas should be required to bring them back, and taxpayers don't need to pay the moving bill again.

[WA-03 Democrat]

27. National security is a large and deep topic

Being able to make our own N95 masks, drugs, energy, semiconductors the list goes on for a long ways. Wishing we had enough face masks and watching people use fabric remnants to solve a sub micron issue was painful horror to watch during the first year of the pandemic. I do not know anyone who can do their job, today in 2022, without using a computer. It may be a smartphone, it may be your marketing, it may be your payment process but it's all connected to the internet and it all powered by silicon.

Intel has done a great job in keeping jobs in the USA. If you think they are the poster child for corporate greed, why did they not divest all of their fabs in dot.com flash? They knew the products were too important-yes companies and corporation do sometimes make the right decisions. The US government is the number consumer of chips from Intel. I have worked with Intel for 3 decades and they just are not evil bastards. What greed or hand out can you site within the US semiconductor so that Senator Sanders can enjoy his month of cherry Kool-Aid and Ben and Jerry's ice cream during recess vacation knowing his obstruction helped his countrymen?

The USA needs to build the blocks of our modern devices here or it will be a short hop back to the stone age. The system is fragile and complex. Bumper sticker logic does not stand up to examination.

[Uncle Joe]

28. Wealth disparity is the greatest national security threat to the United States and beyond

for it allows all other adverse, critical dynamics; monopolization, poverty, disease, warfare, global warming climate change, loss of rights and freedom to increased authoritarianism while corrupt and incompetent governments are allowed to develop and flourish with little to no correction until crisis hits and then it just becomes a matter of mitigation and public relations.

The greatest "building blocks" that the United States has is its' people and the government can either serve to enlighten, lift them up and bring them along as to best deal with a rapidly changing world or leave them behind to the highest bidding wolves on Wall Street.

If you do the latter, at some point we might not be able to afford stones.

[reACTIONary]

30. +100 nt

[reACTIONary]

29. +100 nt

[Progressive dog]

37. We should have done something to keep semiconductors here way before this.

[Doremus]

9. The oligarchy is so firmly entrenched that its members have no qualms about announcing it on TV

Scary to think about. Vote and tell everyone you know to vote. Put these videos on your phones and show every person you come in contact with because no one will believe you without seeing it. There is little else us proles can do, sadly.

[lambchopp59]

11. I'm still taking a certain post surgical pill, about 10.50 per pill with my GoodRx

My actual employer based insurance won't cover it at all. For the uninsured, it could cost nearly $40 for one tiny pill.
Interventional drugs for my condition cost well over $1000 per dose. Again, insurance covers none of it.
Oh, they're all too happy to keep me hopped up on opioids until the tumors eat me alive. Those a cheap enough, and covered.

I'm not sure what went wrong with the ACA here. To get actual treatments, I'd have to render myself homeless. Then I couldn't work and afford what few other payment obligations I have left.

Yeah, I was a Bernie Bro, and it's shit like this is exactly why. Late-boomer thru the younger generations tends to look at the Capitalist system that dumped us off just around RayGun's time.

I'll continue to vote against the proponents of the most egregiously greedy capitalism.
But for those with limiting conditions, incurring regular debt to hospitals and the exceedingly greedy phamaceutical co's, that have knocked me forever below decent home ownership despite an above average income?
Damn frustrating.

[Mosby]

12. Sometimes I really love Bernie.

He says what needs to be said, without all the BS.

[jaxexpat]

25. Yes, and he says it consistently and repeats it identically at every opportunity.

Beating the drum with the perpetual warning about the evils of concentrated wealth. He is the real deal. A genuine socialist. He's not young even if his message is youthful in its renewability.

Who will carry that necessary torch when he's gone? Wouldn't seem right to go down without, at least, a loudish whimper.

[gratuitous]

18. A bit of analysis for how we got here

Why did all the chip manufacturing go overseas? Money, plain and simple. The manufacturers terminated 150,000 jobs in the United States because, while they were making a profit manufacturing in the States, they could make more profit paying workers in other countries considerably less than what they paid to U.S. workers.

Now the consequences of that corporate policy have begun to come into focus, and whoa! national security is at risk. Do the manufacturers respond to the nation? Well, maybe. At a price. Profits for chip manufacturers is in the tens of billions, but don't expect them to spend any of that sweet, sweet profit building up the plants necessary in the United States. No, it's up to the taxpayers, the working folks that got so badly screwed when the chip makers deserted the country, to pay these Masters of the Universe to do the right thing by the nation. Oh, and if we empty the Treasury to lure the manufacturers back, don't anyone dream of asking for some guarantees from the beneficiaries. Are you some kind of anti-capitalist commie or something?

[KPN]

20. Globalization has enabled corporations to make national security a key ingredient to gluttonous

profit and CEO compensation. Too many apologists come into play politically when the national security card comes into play. "National security" should not legitimize gluttony.

[Lancero]

31. If they're going to argue that these industries are critical aspects of national security...

Then perhaps, for matters of national security, they should be nationalized.

[Just A Box Of Rain]

32. I'm with Biden. Having a semiconductor industry in the USA is vital to our national security.

[questionseverything]

38. Yes but we shouldn't have to bribe American companies to stay here

[Just A Box Of Rain]

39. Vs every other country with semi-conductors industries that are heavily subsidized

by their governments?

Nope. Biden has this right.

[questionseverything]

40. It's not about Biden being right or wether the legislation is necessary

It’s about the lack of patriotism these companies show as they threaten to leave

Ever notice everyone but the regular people get “subsidized “?

[Just A Box Of Rain]

42. Basic economics on the first point

and nonsense on the second point.

[questionseverything]

43. Patriotism is nonsense?

🤮

[Just A Box Of Rain]

44. Nice try anyway.

[reACTIONary]

33. Intel CEO says semiconductors are like oil --

Intel CEO says semiconductors are like oil — making more in U.S. can avoid global crises

https://www.cnbc.com/2022/03/23/intel-ceo-making-semiconductors-in-us-is-more-important-than-oil-reserves.html

Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger on Wednesday likened semiconductors to oil, suggesting that computer chips will play a central role in international relations in the decades ahead.

“Oil reserves have defined geopolitics for the last five decades. Where the fabs [factories] are for a digital future is more important,” Gelsinger said in an interview on CNBC’s “Squawk Box.” “Let’s build them where we want them, and define the world that we want to be part of in the U.S. and Europe.”

[Uncle Joe]

34. As of 2018 the United States became the world's top oil producer

that still didn't stop one of the richest people in the world from murdering a Washington Post journalist, have his body dismembered while basically getting a free pass for "national security" sake.

As of 2020, the United States is still the single largest crude oil producer in the world, a position it has held since 2018.

However, the U.S. is not a monolithic entity, and the amount of oil that a given area can produce is limited by how much crude is actually underneath it. As such, crude oil production varies from state to state. And though some states continue to pump out crude oil in enormous volumes, many have been experiencing a dwindling output over the years.

Here's what to know about the top six oil-producing states, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, and their respective petroleum industries.

(snip)

https://www.investopedia.com/financial-edge/0511/top-6-oil-producing-states.aspx#:~:text=As%20of%202020%2C%20the%20United,it%20has%20held%20since%202018.

So I don't expect semi-conductors to be any different so long as U.S. and global wealth disparity remains at highly dysfunctional levels.

In 2021, billionaires saw the steepest increase in their share of wealth on record, according to The World Inequality Lab’s annual World Inequality Report.

The top 0.01% richest individuals—the 520,000 people who have at least $19 million— now hold 11% of the world’s wealth, up a full percentage point from 2020, the report found. Meanwhile, the share of global wealth owned by billionaires has grown from 1% in 1995 to 3% in 2021.

The jump comes as governments around the world poured money into their economies to mitigate the economic pain created by pandemic shutdowns. But that money also boosted stock prices and real estate values, adding to the wealth of top-earning individuals.

“Since wealth is a major source of future economic gains, and increasingly, of power and influence, this presages further increases in inequality,” economists Abhijit Banerjee and Esther Duflo, who won a 2019 Nobel prize for their research on poverty, wrote in the introduction of the report. We are living in a world with an “extreme concentration of economic power in the hands of a very small minority of the super-rich,” they said.

(snip)

https://fortune.com/2021/12/07/worlds-richest-inequality-richer-during-pandemic/

[reACTIONary]

35. That's great for us. Unfortunately....

... the EU is very dependent on Russian oil and gas. And that's not working out so well for them right now. They should have diversified their supply chain, and have developed domestic alternatives. So that's the analogy; that's the lesson.

While both Taiwan and S. Korea are allies, they are in a region that is becoming more and more dominated by China. We need to start diversifying our semiconductor supply chains, and developing domestic alternatives.

Luckily we have that under control for oil, and luckily we can build fab infrastructure where we want it.

[Uncle Joe]

36. That's another case of wealth disparity having some nations if not the world

by the pubes.

If not for the oligarchs.

[dalton99a]

41. Kick

https://www.mercurynews.com/2008/01/18/intel-to-shut-down-last-silicon-valley-fab-this-year/

Intel to shut down last Silicon Valley ‘fab’ this year
By Mark Boslet | Mercury News
January 18, 2008 at 6:37 p.m.

Intel, a pillar of Silicon Valley’s high-tech revolution and 40-year pioneer of the semiconductor business, is closing its last local chip plant later this year.

The plant closing reflects how the changing dynamics of the industry continue to push the development and production of semiconductors to other parts of the world.

The world’s largest computer-chip maker, with a global workforce of 86,000, told employees about a week ago that fabrication plant “D2” would cease its operations in the third quarter of the year. About 500 jobs will be affected, with employees either leaving the company or looking for positions in other Intel facilities.

Intel today has fabs in Oregon, Arizona, New Mexico, Massachusetts, Israel and Ireland. It also is building a manufacturing plant in China.