The president of the Semiconductor Industry Association recently visited the country to learn more about how it is encouraging the development of its own chip industry. He and his staff came away impressed with the gleaming new universities and research facilities that are springing up in various parts of China.
The SIA, a consortium of U.S. chip companies, is trying to bring some of that buzz back to the United States. The U.S. share of worldwide chip production has fallen to 15 percent of the world’s total, which isn’t enough to sustain a “critical mass” of educational opportunities, design breakthroughs and overall competitiveness, according to Scalise.
The group would like to see that number increase to 30 percent over the next few years. But it doesn’t believe that will happen unless the U.S. government increases funding for math and science education and research in grade schools and universities; allows more foreign workers to come to the U.S.; and reforms tax policies to give U.S. companies a better chance of competing against heavy government subsidies in other countries. Scalise and a group of SIA representatives recently visited San Francisco to talk about their proposals for encouraging more domestic chip production. An edited transcript of that conversation with CNET News.com follows.
I hate big government advocates. I really do. And I don’t care what they’re advocates for.
This guy seems to be under the impression that nannying the chip industry is going to be its savior. I wholeheartedly disagree and think that’s the dumbest idea ever. That’s simply not the way our country works. Yes we rely heavily on the private sector. That’s just the way it is. In a better effort to prove how astonishingly clueless he really is, Scalise makes this genius statement:
What can the U.S. learn from China?
Scalise: They’re making huge investments in the university infrastructure. They’re also increasing their funding, their basic research at these universities. We’re at 0.7 percent of GDP (gross domestic product) going into basic research. They are at 1.5 percent. They have a smaller GDP right now, but that’s OK. They are still a higher level, but they’re going to bump that up to 2.5 percent.
That’s what the US can learn from China, in a nutshell. Well, apparently on his trip to China, Mr. Scalise didn’t notice one major difference. People in China make next to nothing. Now granted, that money is probably more than they would make in rural farming communities, etc., but you cannot possibly reasonably compare the Chinese to the US in any aspect. They pay some employees $50 a week. In the US, some engineers at chip plants make twice that amount hourly.
And another thing Mr. Scalise didn’t notice is that China sells those cheaply produced parts, chips, and such at a huge profit because of those labor costs, resulting in a nice stream of income for the plants producing them.
You know, it almost seems like those two things are so basic that Scalise not mentioning them is almost intentional. He ultimately seems to want the US Government to back the chip manufacturing industry.
Over my dead body, pal.
[tags]SIA, scalise, china, usa[/tags]