This is a bit higher level than "decline of functioning society" but still points to the inevitable Idiocracy world that we are entering.
The US passed the US Chips Act of 2022 to try to encourage cutting edge semiconductor manufacturing in America (the sentiment wasn't bad but you can't just wave a pen and magically make things like this happen).
The most successful effect was Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co begininng to build facilities in Arizona, at a cost of over $40 BILLION USD ($17B paid by the US taxpayer), to be staffed by mostly American workers (along with Affirmative Action quotas and other restrictions). So far it has been an unmitigated disaster, and many wonder if the plant will open at all.
True of course, but how could you not know that before agreeing to spend $60 billion here? Gotta lay some blame at the feet of the Asians on that one. Maybe their only experience with America is in Hollywood movies where everyone is beautiful, smart, and rich. Incidentally, the former CEO of TSMC, who grew it into the powerhouse it is today, was very negative on the plan.
They are already building plants in Japan, and are 6 months ahead of schedule. The work ethic, strong STEM education, and lack of fraud / greed in the development and construction stages will soon prove to TSMC management that Japan is a far better choice. What will happen to the US plant? It's too expensive to scrap completely, so it would probably be re-tasked to producing lower priced easier to produce products like the chips used in auto manufacturing instead of cutting edge CPUs and GPUs. Another strong possibility is Apple could purchase the plant to produce chips for its phones and computers. Then we would have the American government subsidizing an American company that (recently) had MORE money than the US government itself ! All for 6,000 mediocre paying jobs (outside of the managers, the jobs are not high level, and are not that desirable even in China and Taiwan):
At the end of the day, it's a very questionable proposition, even if it were to work: If the plan were carried out to its full potential, a total of 3 fabrication plants would be built and employ around 6,000 people. Now, 6,000 jobs does a LOT for a community, but in the grand scheme of things, the plant will be owned and run by foreigners ( Chinese no less--Taiwanese themselves consider themselves Chinese, it's only American retards that don't get this), and are highly automated. The only advantage to America is gaining the benefits of using American labor, and to obtain a relatively small number of jobs, the American government is going to waste massive amounts of money. And all the corporate profits and capital returns are shipped overseas. And that's the best case scenario.
Some very telling quotes in the article here:
Yeah, we don't have that.
Sounds like the Taiwanese treat manufacturing like an old school drill sergeant would: weeding out the unproductive and weak, and building a strong team. America only does that for squads of men who are going to go overseas and kill brown people going to weddings: Taiwan does it for their everyday business production.
Oh, boy.