[kovacs]

My exact reaction as well. Or how about all that money used for stock buy backs over the last decade? Intel especially. It's been mismanaged and now it's putting its hand out for government money while having spent billions on stock buy backs. No more but of course it'll happen because the politics of it. Socialism for the rich and corporations, capitalism for the rest of us.

[toast0]

Stock buy backs are just more tax efficient dividends for investors. If the company is suffering from mismanagement, dividends are good, because it returns capital to investors rather than letting managment destroy it.

Intel has been building fab capacity pretty much always, it's just that their 10nm process doesn't work as intended, and they haven't really been able to fix it, so their development is stalled and their production numbers aren't great and they haven't been able to stop making processors at 14nm to do other things with those fabs. So far, I think we've been hearing of delays on their 7nm node as well, so no good news there.

That said, if there's a market for a 14nm or more fab in the US, Intel has shown they can build that, but they'd probably prefer to spend their money getting 7nm to work than building an old tech fab; spending other people's money on a new 14nm (or whatever) fab in the US is still good for Intel though, so it's no wonder they'd put their hand out to do that.

[kovacs]

Stock buybacks end up being nothing other than a transfer of wealth from taxpayers to shareholders because anytime something happens the government steps in bails them out because they're too big. Now everyone knows that so there's no incentive for companies to act responsibly. The fact that it's now accepted and normalized is incredibly disheartening to say the least. No government subsidies. Let the capitalists figure it out. Otherwise let's just nationalize everything instead of privatizing profits and socializing losses.

[quercusa]

I can't imagine Andy Grove would have supported that.