White House Announces 31 Tech Hubs To Improve American Competitiveness (nbcnews.com) 23
The White House on Monday announced it is designating 31 technology hubs in an effort to improve American competitiveness in the technology sector. The hubs will be able to compete for $40 million to $75 million each in grants, the White House said. From a report: A tech hub designation is "a strong endorsement of a region's plan to supercharge a critical technology ecosystem and become a global leader over the next decade," the U.S. Economic Development Administration said on its website. The move was authorized under the CHIPS and Science Act, the White House said, which President Joe Biden frequently touts as a highlight of his economic agenda. The act, which the president signed in August 2022, aimed to improve semiconductor manufacturing and supply chains in the U.S. It also authorized $10 billion to invest in technology hubs nationwide, according to the administration.
"These Tech Hubs will catalyze investment in technologies critical to economic growth, national security, and job creation, and will help communities across the country become centers of innovation critical to American competitiveness," the White House said in a news release. The hubs focus on a wide range of technological areas, including quantum computing, artificial intelligence, clean energy, medicine and biotechnology. The location of the hubs spans 32 states and Puerto Rico and include areas with a tribal government, coal communities and states with smaller populations, according to the U.S. Economic Development Administration.
"These Tech Hubs will catalyze investment in technologies critical to economic growth, national security, and job creation, and will help communities across the country become centers of innovation critical to American competitiveness," the White House said in a news release. The hubs focus on a wide range of technological areas, including quantum computing, artificial intelligence, clean energy, medicine and biotechnology. The location of the hubs spans 32 states and Puerto Rico and include areas with a tribal government, coal communities and states with smaller populations, according to the U.S. Economic Development Administration.
Re:Airdropped cash is the solution (Score:4, Informative)
Here is the list of states and giftee's: eda.gov [eda.gov]
Maybe one or two of these will yield something lasting and meaningful. The rest will vanish into a puff of professional class comforts.
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Boitech huh? Yeah it's a typo but it's one of the funnier ones I've seen in awhile.
Better article (Score:2)
This one actually has the States listed, and has some useful info instead of a bunch of words that don't do much to describe what is happening..
https://apnews.com/article/biden-raimondo-tech-hubs-innovation-jobs-205ef4710451f2d37595739056c648ae
Unfortunately the state I live in is not on the list, it is kind of a strange list, with both Montana(!) and Massachusetts on it.. some make sense to be on there others, not so sure.. While I do think this is important and could be useful for some innovative folks out
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A little surprised by the winners in the Pacific Northwest - microfluidics research and mass timber made the list from Oregon State University, but nothing for semiconductors which I knew there was a big push on from Portland State University, Intel, Analog Devices, and the regional governmental entities as well as the State of Oregon and the governor's office in order to secure land for fab development, or clean energy grid stuff from Portland General Electric, Puget Sound Energy, Northwest Natural, and th
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... some make sense to be on there others, not so sure ...
These are government handouts, you're looking in the wrong place for understanding why... the question to ask is how can this money (that we don't have, at already over $33,000,000,000,000 in debt) be spent to buy the most votes? Hint: it's a transfer from taxpayers to rich Americans.
Or they could just get out of the way (Score:2, Insightful)
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Which taxes should be lower, which bureaucracy should be smaller, which regulations should be repealed and which markets aren't free enough?
These are kind of inarguable but also completely arguable because these things don't always work the way free-marketeers say they will. Hell, removing regulations, lowering taxes and "freeing" markets is partly to blame for the exodus of tech and manufacturing from the US domestic market to offshored countries in that 80s to current timeframe.
I can agree with cutting c
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
Which taxes should be lower
Business "private property" tax, where you pay taxes on equipment you buy on an ongoing basis. That is, if a company builds a new lab with millions of dollars worth of equipment, they have to pay taxes when they buy the equipment, then again the following year for having the equipment, then the following year, then the following year, etc... It's a common tax abatement, but it makes absolutely no sense if you want corporations reinvesting profit back into their business.
which bureaucracy should be smaller
Most zoning offices. Especially in Ca
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Don't necessarily disagree with those options but i'd have to look into the FDA one more to form an opinion, thank you for being specific.
The corollary to "the free market doesn't work the way you think" is that absolutely nobody knows how the market/economy *should* work. It's far, far too complicated. Maybe a company has figured out a way to make steel that might make the process 10% more efficient, which would be a huge boon to the steel industry. However, the government is giving money away to make solar panels, so that's what that company goes after, as it's guaranteed money in the bank as opposed to a potential money maker.
These i take issue with. I don't think the *manner in which* in economy works really matters in the end, I don't have any real deontological beliefs in how the economy operates, what matters are the goals and the outcomes. Many things markets do wonderfully at, when goods can be elastic, there's incentives for robust competition and advances to drive prices down. These
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The simple answer is: all of them. Yes, even that one.
Government doesn't help innovation and invention, it stifles it. While government can fund markets and make them disproportionately impactful, such as has happened with eg. 'green subsidies', it doesn't actually drive the innovation itself because the stimulus is artificial (either on the subsidy side in favor of green tech, or against the competition in the form of regulations).
Re:Or they could just get out of the way (Score:5, Insightful)
We already spend way more than our current taxation can offset, so before talking about lowering taxes, why don't you go ahead and figure out what hundreds of billions of dollars per year you would cut out before we talk any further about lowering taxes?
Do not bitch about deficit spending while grousing about wanting tax cuts. And please do not try to justify tax cuts because "they will pay for themselves in economic growth!!1!!one!" as we now have analysis of the Bush tax cuts in 2001 and 2003: analysis of the tax cuts by Brookings Institution economist William Gale and Dartmouth professor Andrew Samwick, former chief economist on George W. Bush’s Council of Economic Advisers, found that “there is, in short, no first-order evidence in the aggregate data that these tax cuts generated growth.”
So basically we gave a bunch of money back to rich people that already had shitloads of money, while pouring on debt by putting two wars (one completely unnecessary, btw) on credit cards. And then Trump piled on even more debt with a fresh round of tax cuts with the vast majority of the cuts going to the top brackets yet again.
Maybe since that hasn't worked out as well as the "trickle down" guys keep promising it will, we go a different direction and keep taxes where they are while realigning spending to get better value out of our taxes?
What about other competitiveness? (Score:1)
We've already seen how our lack of manufacturing and other industries and leaves us holding the bag when the developing world suddenly has leverage over us. Tech isn't the sole thing we should be investing in to remain competitive.
"Tech Hubs will catalyze investment in technologies critical to economic growth, national security, and job creation, and will help communities across the country become centers of innovation critical to American competitiveness"
Public education and transportation is much more cri
Mmmmm, bacon! (Score:3)
This has pork written all over it. A list of tech hubs that don't include a single tech hub, with the possible exception of Massachusetts and Miami if you squint hard enough. No, this is money that will simply get siphoned off into someone's pockets.
First off, $40M buys absolutely nothing, maybe a mid-sized office building or 20 top-tier engineers with materials and supporting staff for a year.
If Silicon Valley has shown anything it's that concentration of skills wins. Want to create a hub? Invest BIG in a specific area, $600M-$1B sounds ballpark, and ensure a core group of world class experts are in that area to draw from. Then you just have to hope the experts agree to go, that some kind of synergy develops, and that the timing is just right.
You can't just anoint North Haverbrook a tech hub because they're getting a monorail. This is just burning tax payer money to back pat some politicians.
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Government hype vs. execution (Score:4, Insightful)
In the same bill Biden had billions earmarked for EV charging network expansion. Where are we 2 years later? Still mostly doing paperwork, and worse - after almost the entire EV industry has announced they are dropping the existing plug standard (CCS1) in North America, Biden administration is still hanging on to it, primarily because the new standard came from Tesla, which doesn't donate to election campaigns, nor has unions which do.
With this track record, I wouldn't hold my breath over any meaningful results from this announcement.
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Yup the speed of government. I know a guy who just got a multi million dollar grant from the government to enable broadband in rural areas. He works for a smaller ISP. The grant was an Obama era grant! There is still money there, but it takes soooo long to get it out. If we think government (today) can push technology we are sadly mistaken.
Now that Cancer Moonshot is a success... (Score:2)
Here come the carpetbaggers (Score:2)
Hot Air (Score:2)
Promoting technology is not a bad thing. But just talking about it is a waste of time. Announcing that Nutbush, Tennessee has been designated as a "technology hub" will not make it so. As usual, the President has answered a real need with committees and an announcement that the problem has been solved while nothing real has been accomplished.
LOL yeah right. (Score:2)