Anyone with a sense of fairness should dislike Intel.... They already have every financial advantage over AMD (i.e. Intel R&D budget: $15 billion, AMD R&D budget: $2 Billion), and instead of out innovating to compete, they do things like try to buy up all of TSMC's 3nm capacity to keep it out of AMD hands, a behavior that hurts every consumer and enthusiast, so if you don't despise Intel's actions, you're not looking out for your own self interests, and now they're being handed billions of dollars of taxpayer money without any restrictions or guarantees of how its used.
This legislation has been sold to the public as "creating jobs", but in reality there's not a single thing in this legislation that prevents the companies that receive it from engaging in stock buybacks, huge executive bonuses, and other typical corporate behavior that ensures short term profitability over everything else, and with the recent news that Intel didn't do so well the previous quarter, Intel has every incentive to engage in such behavior.... Just like the Airlines did once they received billions during covid, they were supposed to use that government money to keep people employed, but they didn't, they still laid everyone off or forced them into early retirement and the result of which is the current terrible service and constant cancelation of flights, and like always, the government just shrugs because there was never any intent to ensure such money was used properly.... Thanks to politicians being thoroughly bought off by legalized bribery (campaign contributions or the guarantee of a high paying job once their political career is over), these funds were intended, as they are always intended to be a "no questions asked" giveaway.
Intel will do the same, just like every corporation does once they receive a huge handout: please the shareholders, not the public who gave you the money.
In a hypothetical world, If a government who actually cares about what's best for the people we're in charge (and that's neither parties BTW), they wouldn't give Intel any money, they'd tell Intel that either they build fabs domestically, or the government is going to close every tax loophole they currently exploit, raise the corporate tax rate, launch anti-monopoly investigations into every aspect of Intel, and do whatever is necessary to ensure that everyone who's a friend of the United States, or just scared of the United States, doesn't allow Intel to build new fabs there and if they already have fabs in those countries, that they'll get the same treatment. Government should be a counterbalance to corporate power, not its underwriter.
"Fascism should rightfully be called corporatism, because it's a merger of state and corporate power" - Mussolini
-Can we honestly claim to be witnessing anything else with beha ior such as the Chips act?
It just hands out money with absolutely no safe guards or stipulations, meaning Intel can engage in stock buybacks, executive bonuses, whatever thry want with the money with absolutely no oversight from the government, in almost every case this happens whether it be the bailout of 2008, the huge funds given to airlines during the worst of Covid, or now, these companies rarely, if ever use the money for its intended purpose and instead use it to increase shortterm profits and to please shareholders.
It's also funny to me that certain American politicians who do everything in their power to stop any bit of spending to directly help people or address climate change, also claim they're concerned about "the deficit", but when it comes to huge corporate handouts and military budgets (which are just more corporate handouts to defense contractors) they never once mention the deficit.
