Ask Lemmy

Wake up, people.

Taiwan makes 50% of the world's semiconductor 'chips'. They just announced a US$100 billion investment to build a fab plant in the US, to manufacture chips in the US. A few things about that.

No American company has anywhere close to $100 billion to invest in anything, The American corporations used their profits to buy back their stock not to invest n production. What cash they had left over, they invested in stocks and bonds, which they have to try and sell before they can use the money. American corporations are. essentially, cash liquidity poor despite their huge profits. They do not have the liquidity to build anything. Musk may be the world's richest man on paper, but a few Chinese financiers have much greater liquidity wealth than he does, and they are actually able to BUILD things. It is the difference between financialized wealth and actual money.

South Asia has enough investment money to build more kilometers (miles, if you are American) of high speed rail every year for the last several years than the US has TOTAL, and this money is just a drop in the bucket to them. There just is not enough liquidity in American corporations to build anywhere close to what China can do. American corporations squandered their wealth in the pursuit of maximizing profit payouts to shareholders, and the shareholders just used this capital to buy the same shares at higher and higher prices Not a penny of that money went into building new plant, it just went to increasing the price of existing shares.

Essentially, America is becoming a branch plant operation of Chinese corporations with profits going back to South Asian investors, and Americans get stupidly low wages. America is rapidly becoming the low-wage country of the world. The lower the stock market goes, the cheaper it is for South Asian money to buy up control of American corporations. When GM went bankrupt, China bought the restructured shares. When Ford almost went bankrupt, China bought the non-American Ford subsidiaries to save Ford, but essentially gained complete control of Ford. All profits from Ford auto sales go back to China. Haier now owns General Electric Appliance Division, and is now making what are essentially Haier appliances in America, using cheap slave-labor-wage Americans to build them cheaper than they can in China. All the profits, however, go back to China.

The Law of Unintended Consequences. The Trump misguided policies are just accelerating the sell-off of America. Trump wants foreign corporations to build their product in America, using cheap American labor, ignoring completely that the profits all flow out of America and the foreign investors now control American production.

Like Trump said, it is a good time to get rich. Like Trump dd NOT say, it is the South Asians that are getting rich. China owns most of the American treasury bills, now China will soon own most of the American production plant.