US Aims To Turn Middle-American Cities Into New Tech Hubs With $500 Million Investment (cnbc.com) 56
An anonymous reader quotes a report from CNBC: The U.S. government is seeking to turn metro areas in middle America into the next hot spots of tech innovation with an initial $500 million investment. The Department of Commerce announced Friday its first notice of funding opportunity, or NOFO, for the Regional Technology and Innovation Hub program, known as Tech Hubs. It kicks off the process for eligible groups around the country to apply to be designated as Tech Hubs. That designation gives them the chance to take advantage of the funds to make their regions attractive places for entrepreneurs and technologists to live and work.
Congress authorized $10 billion for the program between fiscal years 2023 and 2027, of which $500 million is available to be distributed this year. Under the current funding opportunity, a total of $15 million in planning grants will be made available to applicants designated as Tech Hubs. Later this year, the Department will seek to award five to 10 designated Tech Hubs grants of $50 million to $75 million each to help build out capacity in their region, according to a Department of Commerce official. President Joe Biden requested $4 billion be made available for Tech Hubs in next year's budget.
Eligible applicants are groups made up of at least one entity from each of the following categories: a higher education institution, subdivision of local or state government, industry or firm in relevant tech or manufacturing field, economic development group, and labor organization or workforce training group. Under the statute, Tech Hubs should focus on a specific set of key areas of technology, which include artificial intelligence, robotics, natural disaster prevention, biotechnology, cybersecurity, energy efficiency and more. The department must designate at least 20 Tech Hubs under the law. The hope is that the infusion of funds will help regions across the country become essential centers of innovation and create more well-paying jobs across a greater swath of the nation. "America leads the world in technological innovation. But the sad reality is that our tech ecosystem is extremely concentrated," Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo told reporters on a briefing call Thursday, noting that 80% of U.S. venture capital money is invested in the San Francisco Bay Area, the Northeast and Southern California. "There's so much more potential for tech innovation all across the country. In the U.S. we have the best research institutions in the world. That's indisputable. And frankly, many of them are in America's heartland, far from the coast."
"President Biden is so clear on one point, which is that everyone in America deserves a fair shot at economic opportunity, no matter where they live, and they shouldn't have to move in order to get a good job," Raimondo said. "Nobody should have to leave their family or support system or network to move to New York or San Francisco just to get a good job."
Congress authorized $10 billion for the program between fiscal years 2023 and 2027, of which $500 million is available to be distributed this year. Under the current funding opportunity, a total of $15 million in planning grants will be made available to applicants designated as Tech Hubs. Later this year, the Department will seek to award five to 10 designated Tech Hubs grants of $50 million to $75 million each to help build out capacity in their region, according to a Department of Commerce official. President Joe Biden requested $4 billion be made available for Tech Hubs in next year's budget.
Eligible applicants are groups made up of at least one entity from each of the following categories: a higher education institution, subdivision of local or state government, industry or firm in relevant tech or manufacturing field, economic development group, and labor organization or workforce training group. Under the statute, Tech Hubs should focus on a specific set of key areas of technology, which include artificial intelligence, robotics, natural disaster prevention, biotechnology, cybersecurity, energy efficiency and more. The department must designate at least 20 Tech Hubs under the law. The hope is that the infusion of funds will help regions across the country become essential centers of innovation and create more well-paying jobs across a greater swath of the nation. "America leads the world in technological innovation. But the sad reality is that our tech ecosystem is extremely concentrated," Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo told reporters on a briefing call Thursday, noting that 80% of U.S. venture capital money is invested in the San Francisco Bay Area, the Northeast and Southern California. "There's so much more potential for tech innovation all across the country. In the U.S. we have the best research institutions in the world. That's indisputable. And frankly, many of them are in America's heartland, far from the coast."
"President Biden is so clear on one point, which is that everyone in America deserves a fair shot at economic opportunity, no matter where they live, and they shouldn't have to move in order to get a good job," Raimondo said. "Nobody should have to leave their family or support system or network to move to New York or San Francisco just to get a good job."
Doesn't work (Score:1)
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And yet much of the actual work that goes into producing the physical stuff of technology, like semiconductor fabrication, takes place far away from the actual Silicon Valley these days.
If this initiative is run smartly then they'll publicly talk about startups, but in the background they'll work with semiconductor-industry and electronics-industry manufacturers to bring production lines back from China to the United States as even Chinese manufacturing costs continue to increase, setting them up where they
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One thing not mentioned, since it is clear nothing real will be done for Climate Change, this is a smart move. Get people to slowly move away from the coasts. This way there would be no Mass Migrations in the US.
There are plenty such places in the Mississippi-Missouri Watershed or the Great Lakes Basin where the shipping of products from these factories would be fairly easy using the navigable waterways
The only thing with the Mississippi River, based upon the weather last year (2022), the river will not be able to handle the traffic. But there is always the St Lawrence River. That should be stable for much longer.
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At the rate the progressive socialists are destroying SF, LA, Seattle, Portland, Oakland, etc it soon won't be hard to get people moved away from the coast. Many will relocate to the midwestern cities where law and order is still enforced.
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See the actual numbers [wikipedia.org]. It lists the 100 largest cities in the US and you can sort by different types of crime. Going by total violent crime, SF is number 37, LA is 32, Seattle is 51, and Portland is 62. Of all the ones you mentioned, Oakland is the only one with an actual high crime rate, though at number 11 it's still a ways down the list.
Which cities have the highest rates of violent crime? The top five are St. Louis, Detroit, Baltimore, Memphis, and Kansas City. The South is by far the most violent
Re: Doesn't work (Score:1)
Nobody actually believes those numbers. It only takes a casual visit to thr cities to see they could not possibly be true.
Crime statistics of course remain low when your police do nothing to respond to reported crimes.
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Oh but don't you know, leading criminologists all agree that locking up criminals does not reduce crime. All crime is caused by poverty. Implement the DNC platform in it's entirety and only that can reduce crime. /s
Big Tech is already distributed, why not? (Score:2)
Andrew Yang answered this. He said it doesn't work because if a talented entrepreneur emerges, a VC investor in Silicon Valley calls that person and says, "Leave your flunky loser employees in (middle american city) and fly out to San Jose and we'll do something BIG! So the concentration remains in NorCal because that's where the "synergy" is.
EVERY big tech company has offices all over the place. If a big tech company can have offices in SV, Seattle, Austin, Boston, Tel Aviv, London, etc....why not another one in WI, IL, MO, MI, etc? I've long thought rather than expand to Austin, why not Detroit or St Louis? There's a ton of urban infrastructure, public transportation, huge roads, fed by giant highways, reliable power/water/etc. I remember after the 2008 subprime crash, they were selling houses in Detroit for less than 20k...the auctioneer
HIgh Speed Rail. (Score:2)
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High speed rail is not even close to a reasonable transportation solution for the US. It's way more expensive than flying, takes way longer, construction is way more expensive and time consuming, and doesn't make any sense for the size of this country. We have an extensive airport network that works far better.
The cheapest one week round trip high speed rail from Barcelona to Paris leaving today is $421 and takes over 5 hours. The same trip leaving today is $331 on Air France and takes less than 2 hours. I'
Re:HIgh Speed Rail. (Score:5, Insightful)
Have you taken a ride on French TGV?
In 1998 on a marketing trip, a small group of us stepped onto the TGV at a station about 4 minute cab ride from our hotel in Paris. No security hassle, no waiting for gates, no standing in line loading/unloading. 1.5 hours later, we were in Le Mans meeting with customers. Back again to Paris that afternoon.
Current price is about 10 euro.
Air travel the way we do it here is is nowhere near competitive with the convenience of high speed rail for any trip less than 250 miles and is just great for weekend trips up to 450 or so. I live in central Ohio and wish for high speed rail to Chicago or points east.
Your bullshit, emotionally loaded comments about "leftism" leave out easy, fast, inexpensive and effective.
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Current price is $40, not 10 Euro, for a 200 km (120 mile) trip. That's about the distance from NYC to Hartford, CT, or in US terms, right next door.
https://www.raileurope.com/en/... [raileurope.com]
And again, how are you going to pay for the track? $125 billion for 550km/350 miles of high speed rail is what is costs to build in California.
Let's say you can get a 300 mile route built through Indiana and Ohio for 10% of that, $12.5 billion (to be clear, there is no chance it would be this cheap, but let's give every advantag
Re:HIgh Speed Rail. (Score:4, Informative)
I was responding to "groobly" whose message has zero analysis but plenty of emotional political bullshit.
You are correct on the $86.14 round trip between and La Mans. I used "trainline" just now to price a round trip for Monday May 15, 10:00 outbound, 18:00 return. My first search produced fake-cheap fares and I should have looked further.
I wrote that high speed rail works best for trips up to about 300 miles, at which distance reduced flight time balances the various wait times and inconvenience of air travel. (...And I realize fully that my "fantasized" Chicago trip is about that far...)
1.5 hour through security and waiting to load
20 minutes loading, passenger seating
15 minutes taxiing
45 minutes flight time
15 minutes taxiing
15 minutes unloading
-- No luggage, I (hope to be able to) carry-on a weekend bag. If forced to check it,
35 minutes waiting for luggage
Without baggage wait time, that's 3 hours and 20 minutes.
Train is far far more comfortable. I no longer fly voluntarily. Seat pitch and seat width are too short and narrow respectively. (I am 6"4", 200lb). You are welcome to fly. On the rare occasions when I cannot avoid flying, I need to get to the airport at least 1.5 hours ahead of scheduled departure time.There was a time when flying wasn't a giant pain in the ass but those days are gone.
Your comment about ROI is worth considering given that most major cities have airports and much of the initial capital has been amortized, while preparing high speed rail is "new". Ongoing maintenance of airport infrastructure continues to be a fair spend though, not only in the airport itself but in the various upgrades to support traffic flows (and to the best of my knowledge, all of that road construction is "normal budget", not categorized as a cost of site preparation). Finally, the air fleet also requires maintenance, upgrades, etc. I do not have time to go into all that additional detail, but I believe your analysis is a bit rosy for air travel and cynical W.R.T. rail.
Comment removed (Score:4, Informative)
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That is exactly the site I used for pricing, and the 5 dates between today and mid July I used all came up with the same price. Please actually post a $43 fare for the high speed train if you can find it.
You're still wasting 2 hours on the train by your own numbers. Your preference, fine, but not the preference of the vast majority of people.
Again, how are you going to pay for the construction? $125 billion needs to be paid back, what volume of passengers at what ticket price would actually make money? The
Re: HIgh Speed Rail. (Score:4, Insightful)
You ignore that the supposed 2 hour flight requires two hours of security and commuting too/from the airport as well, whereas high speed rail usually runs on 15 minute intervals and you can just walk on. If you believe the TSA, and get to the airport 2 hours before your flight, you'd spend 4 hours of your theoretical commute stuck in airports or security.
Your argument ignores that planes get delayed and cancelled frequently, especially in bad weather, while trains are much more reliable.
Your argument ignores that airplane interiors are inhumane sardine cans, while trains can have bars in them.
Your argument pretends those supposed 600 airports were free to build, are free to travel to, and that trains can't also connect to other trains and the same airports for that matter.
Your argument ignores that trains are electric whereas planes drink oil and belch CO2. Even if you don't care about the CO2, planes still absolutely require a stable petro-economy to function.
Your argument ignores that the US had a comprehensive and successful passenger train network already for 100+ years before it was dismantled as a very direct result of misguided federal transportation policy, disproving the supposed "vastness of the US" fable.
Your argument ignores that high speed rail already functions worldwide in corridors with lower population density, higher land area, and lower GDP than equivalent corridors in the US, again disproving the "vastness of the US" argument.
No, the US absolutely needs trains. The real reason we don't have them is the federal government decided to go all-in spending billions on a "cars only" transportation policy and ignore passenger rail. That's the reason.
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Who fed you that one? Name and shame, please!
They built that airport out in the middle of nowhere in order to save money. So yes, if you want to transport people from nowhere to nowhere, airports are one way to do it.
Now let's compare the cost of building a
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There is a train line downtown to the airport now. They have been talking about a line to Colorado Springs for a couple years now but I think they are stalled on money and locations for it
Of course none of it is HSR, but at least the options are growing, if slowly.
I propose a new unit of measure (Score:5, Insightful)
Since Beyonce's latest tour will cost $2 bn, I assert we can usefully communicate the actual value of this government investment by calling it "1/4 Beyonce" showing simultaneously the triviality of this investment and absurdity of what our society values.
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It's costing the people buying tickets 2 billion.
$15 million won't go far (Score:1, Troll)
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Don't worry. The only thing this is supposed to actually accomplish is another method of diverting money to Democratic party allies and organizers. It's a slush fund for well-connected Democratic city politicians and their buddies, just like "green jobs" is a way to pay off some of their business allies.
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You might just get the crash of the century in about 2 weeks. Everyone in Congress is wealthy enough that they won't be substantially impacted by another Great Depression. Republicans have primed the public well over the last 40 years to assign blame for any economic problems on Democrats, regardless of the cause. The death cult has reached levels of "don't give a fuck" that the material misery it would inflict is just not on their list of concerns. They're willing to trade that to establish an effective on
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You kid, but the current administration has made it clear that they care more about foreigners from those countries than they do about actual U.S. citizens.
Right, that's why years ago they put Kamala on internationally-broadcast television telling them DO NOT COME HERE.
Wait, what?
Come to Idaho... (Score:2)
It'd make a great tech-hub, right? Imagine all that synergy!
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Neither do we, stay in CA or NY or where ever.
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What a weird statistic to cherry pick. Why don't you just use homicide excluding non-negligent manslaughter? What are you trying to obfuscate? Why include suicides, or are you at risk?
Are you ok?
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Second, a large number of the other deaths are accidents or justified. Killing a spouse or daughters date while cleaning the gun. Killing a delivery driver that trespasses. Killing a black person walking through a white space. All acceptable.
But a dead person is a dead
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You said "sorry, I dont want to be brutally murdered" Then you quoted statistics about "suicides... accidents or justified" And of course the racism to take it over the top. You made a claim, didn't find the evidence to back up your claim then used an attempt to muddy the water with anecdotes that are not germane to the claim you made.
On a hunch I took a quick look at your post history, I see you are neuro-atypical, seek help brother, there are many resources available, it is never too late, you dont have
Why? (Score:1)
What is the purpose of this program? Why does the govt care where "hubs" are located? The only purpose of this program is simply graft: give money to your buddies, probably in this case based on some identity politics nonsense.
Re:Why? (Score:4, Insightful)
What is the purpose of this program? Why does the govt care where "hubs" are located? The only purpose of this program is simply graft: give money to your buddies, probably in this case based on some identity politics nonsense.
Oh no! we are so triggered! Identity politics nonsense!
I'm guessing you don't have a clue who invented identity politics. It was written into our constitution, ratified in 1787. It took 3/4 of a century to get to the 13th and 14th amendments to weaken the original "identity politics" structure of this nation, and an additional near 3/4 of a century beyond that to grant the franchise to women.
The bottom line is that many of us know exactly where "identity politics" came from, and we know that was not libruls who invented that nonsense.
There's no such thing as a tech hub anymore... (Score:2)
$500 Million? (Score:2)
That's nothing. Jay Inslee had to promise a $4 billion budget item to even attract more homeless people to our state.
500m (Score:1)
Why? (Score:3, Insightful)
I don't want to live in racist wastelands where my wife would be forced to have a baby she doesn't want, and there is no medical care available because all the gynecologists left. I don't want to work with the products of their underfunded education system, or products of religious schools who don't understand a lick of science. I don't want to be the only fuel efficient or electric car on the road, and only to be choked by trucks wanting to blow black diesel smoke at me. Sure... the houses are cheaper... for a reason. Those places are not hospitable to intelligent life.
Re: (Score:2)
Fortunately, the people who live there don't want people like you to live there either. So you can both get what you want!
Re: Why? (Score:1)
Rest assured that people who mischaracterize as women hating racists also would like it if closed minded and noninclusive folks remain in their urban enclaves.
Welcome to 2017 (Score:1)
Talk about out of touch.
Did we not just go through a workplace revolution over the past 3 years where there was a massive exodus from tech hubs, to rural areas, because literally everyone found out they could work remotely from their location of choice - more efficiently, and more happily?
The only thing this will do is make middle America towns and cities popular destinations for tourism.