| It's low pay. That's $12 an hour. The majority of Americans of all races and genders earn above $15 an hour [0] Taiwan's average wage (so skewed upwards) was ~$22k a year in 2023 [1]. That was an 8 year high btw - wages have been much lower. Lots of White Collar Taiwanese would move to Mainland China for that reason - they'd earn similar if not higher salaries in Mainland China AND not pay income tax. Basically, OP's point is that companies don't optimize for wages alone (and I can attest to that having hired abroad, and helped move the operations of a former employer to Israel+India from the US). Even TSMC's founder admitted that: On a podcast hosted by the Brookings Institution last year, Chang lamented what he called a lack of “manufacturing talents” in the United States, owing to generations of ambitious Americans flocking to finance and internet companies instead. (“I don’t really think it’s a bad thing for the United States, actually,” he said, “but it’s a bad thing for trying to do semiconductor manufacturing in the U.S.”) [2] [0] - https://nationalequityatlas.org/indicators/Wages_15-hr [1] - https://focustaiwan.tw/business/202311290017 [2] - https://www.politico.com/news/2023/02/14/taiwan-tech-king-pe... |