I was only half-joking when I said on the radio that I don’t know if we can afford for President Joe Biden to keep visiting Arizona. I wasn’t referring to the cost of police escorts – and I wasn’t worried about how much money he’s extracting from campaign contributors here.
My real concern: In an attempt to change voters’ negative view of the local economy, he’ll spend so much government money here that he’ll manifest actual economic negatives.
Like it or not, and even if the perceptions themselves are faulty, presidents get blamed for the economy – good or bad.
And since 63 percent of voters in a recent Wall Street Journal poll had a “Not So Good” or “Poor” view of the current state of the economy (a number that was even worse for so-called “persuadable voters” at 74 percent), Biden has a lot of negative thinking to overcome.
When he came here in March, Biden handed out nearly $20 billion in CHIPS and Science Act grants and loans to Intel. A few days later – in early April – $11.6 billion was awarded to Taiwan Semiconductor (TSMC) in Phoenix – which Biden visited in December.
With that influx of cash, TSMC announced that it will build a third microchip fabrication facility in the North Valley. That’ll create even more high-paying jobs, and that’s good for the Valley’s economy… right?!
Maybe. But what does that influx of workers do to the personal, household economies of the Valley residents who were already here and already priced out of buying a home? Supply and demand will push prices up even more (unless they install beds in TSMC). No civic leader ever said, “We don’t want lucrative jobs here,” but will all that good pay simply mean that home prices and rent go up commensurately?
And what is this doing to the national economy? When you consider that over the last 12 months, the national debt has increased by more than $3 trillion and the federal government is borrowing at a rate of $100,000 per second, I’m not sure where that CHIPS money is actually coming from.
At press time, TSMC’s market cap was almost $745 billion and Intel was worth $154 billion, putting them at No. 9 and No. 84, respectively, on the list of the world’s most valuable companies. Sounds like if we’re going to dig deep to give, we could find something – or somebody – that needs the help more.
I get that there are certain national security reasons for having microchips produced in the United States. Especially with communist China slobbering all over Taiwan – where most chips are made now. But since a lot of water is used in the production of microchips, maybe if they need to be produced stateside, they should be produced somewhere in the U.S. where there are fewer water worries than a desert.
But I’ve got a lot of worries.
I’m worried that we will have to add “Valley Homeowner” to the endangered species list – a list that already includes the rarely seen “Fiscally Conservative Republican” and “Corporate-Welfare-Hating Democrat.”
And I’m worried how much it’ll cost when Joe Biden comes for another visit.
