But that's sorta of hits to the heart of my comment, it's not particularly working well. TSMC has 2 fabs in China and yields+costs are a fraction of whats coming out of Arizona, let alone in Hsinchu.

Like are you really going to buy a chip that costs 70% more out of national pride? Might work on some but think that very few else will sign up for that.

I don't want to speak bad about them but it's just general demand for semiconductors at this point, everyone is just buying it all up because they can. The Arizona plant still doesn't seem to be pumping out and the self-sufficiency target for the US doesn't seem all there. Im sorry to be the bearer of bad news but honestly it's a culture that's hard to replicate and its how it somehow gets done in one country on Earth. The 2030 target for the states surely isn't happening, it's way too ambitious.

People really don't understand how this stuff is borderline magic turning silicon into these things. There's so much that can go wrong at every step, it's the most advanced manufacturing process on Earth.

Once upon a time chips went down in value but I don't think that's happening anymore, lot of other people seem aware of that. Not to mention the semiconductor talent is getting eaten up like pancakes everywhere.

That's because we regulate growth. Seriously. It's exactly the same root cause. Have you heard about why zoning drives up housing prices?

Home owners

For left-wing governments in Britain, building houses is putting yourself out of a job.

Scotland is a good example: every government since the mid-2010s has been elected on the explicit promise to build more houses, they cannot do so because of the electoral consequences so they attempt to build council houses, it is impossible for the government to build enough council houses to make up for multiple decades of underbuilding (this problem has accelerated significantly whilst they have been promising to build housing, had explicit targets, etc.), but at the next election they make the same promises (and people vote for them because there is no alternative).

The really strange thing is that people also see the massive growth in student housing in Scotland. Again, very good for politicians: more conservative foreign students can't vote, domestic students will vote left-wing.

The politics of this topic are very strange. The public is still at the stage where they think in vague terms that the problem is a lack of housing.

I believe the problem is worse in Scotland because the growth in council housing in the 60/70s was organised in order to create this permanent bloc vote. The same has happened in London where you have whole constituencies where 70% of the effective vote is void.