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The U.S. needs a shipbuilding revolution

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Re: The U.S. needs a shipbuilding revolution

#161

Post by mapt »

peepeepoopoo105 wrote: post #6

This will never succeed because the economies of scale are nonexistent without dominance in the commercial shipbuilding market. War planners should have pushed to repeal the Jones Act decades ago, but now Chinese shipbuilding capacity is over 230 times greater than ours because of their success in civilian shipbuilding. The proposed measures in this aricle are too little too late. The only logical course of action at…

Another alternative would be adopting South Korea and Japan into closer orbits the way we unconditionally support Israel. South Korea and Japan have strong commercial shipbuilding industries, which are just in the past few years going idle because China is subsidizing theirs more aggressively.

Re: The U.S. needs a shipbuilding revolution

#162

Post by franktankbank »

jabl wrote: post #129
throw0101c wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This will never succeed because the economies of scale are nonexistent without dominance in the commercial shipbuilding market. War planners should have pushed to repeal the Jones Act decades ago The US used to subsidize the salaries of US merchant marines on ships (US salaries are higher than Filipino ones) so that there would be a trained population, but that was stopped in the 1980s because subsidies are bad, so…

It seems an unintended side effect of the Jones act was to insulate the US shipbuilding industry from international competition, leading to them resting on their laurels while the rest of the industry worked hard to improve productivity (see Japan, South Korea, and lately China). Which makes it even harder to repeal, since with a repeal of the Jones act the wildly noncompetitive (civilian) US shipbuilding industry wo…

Don't we have a suppressed shipping industry? Open it up and get the ships moving between the midwest and east and south and build demand. The old shipping lanes are basically non-existent.

Re: The U.S. needs a shipbuilding revolution

#163

Post by potato3732842 »

roenxi wrote: post #23
aprilthird2021 wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Honest question, is it at all possible for us to have an industrial revitalization given that we have the highest average wages in the world?

Probably. The original industrial revolutions were happening in nations that quickly became wealthy, and the US was doing pretty well with high wages vs. Asia for most of its industrial period. Higher wages in theory should be linked to higher productivity and output per worker in the US due to deep skillsets - otherwise where do the high wages come from? But something might have broken that link. The issue looks fro…

It's probably possible but certain low level things have been all but wholly outsourced for a generation or two. The know-how isn't there to do a lot of stuff at various places on the scale and cost axis.

I'm not what a realistic path to come back from that looks like.

Re: The U.S. needs a shipbuilding revolution

#164

Post by themaninthedark »

lupusreal wrote: post #82
antalis wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They may not attack the US directly like the Japanese did, but China may want to take over its neighbours to expand. Just like Russia could.

FWIW, Japan attacked a military base in am American territory, not then a state, and never had serious plans to invade America proper. They thought they could knock America out of the fight before America realized it was even in a fight with a decisive demoralizing victory that would leave Americans feeling that ceding control of the Pacific to Japan was rational and practical. Obviously that theory didn't work for J…

I think that the events that played out after September 11th show that Americans still have the same reaction.

Re: The U.S. needs a shipbuilding revolution

#165

Post by franktankbank »

FrustratedMonky wrote: post #137
jabl wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems an unintended side effect of the Jones act was to insulate the US shipbuilding industry from international competition, leading to them resting on their laurels while the rest of the industry worked hard to improve productivity (see Japan, South Korea, and lately China). Which makes it even harder to repeal, since with a repeal of the Jones act the wildly noncompetitive (civilian) US shipbuilding industry wo…

"insulate the US shipbuilding industry from international competition, leading to them resting on their laurels" This is what I don't get. The Jones Act is about keeping ship building at home, in the US. So protective. By locking out foreign competition. It's a 'protective' law, to isolate and protect US industry. How will opening the US to buy and operate foreign ships, somehow make the US build more US ships? Look…

Don't look at just the ship builders. Look at the shipping industry where ships are basically non-existent and the old shipping lanes are dead.

Re: The U.S. needs a shipbuilding revolution

#166

Post by franktankbank »

thtowbs wrote: post #150
fuzzfactor wrote: post #132

>The Nation Needs a Shipbuilding Revolution Somebody noticed :) Too late now, Nixon "opened up" China and Ronald Reagan said "NO!" to the kind of prosperity that would be needed in the 21st century. It's like political parties haven't been paying attention at all for a "little" while now. If American voters can not get over electing media "personalities" acting as leaders, those kind of fakers are not going to be far…

There are lot of MAGA people in tech too. Seems party won't last any longer for Americans

Seems the party wasn't good for us anyway.

Re: The U.S. needs a shipbuilding revolution

#167

Post by XorNot »

jabl wrote: post #116
nickff wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The jeune ecole thought that torpedoes and small torpedo boats would doom battleships; they were wrong. People thought SAMs would end bombers, and anti-tank missiles would end tanks. There’s always a new weapon, but it doesn’t mean the old ones are obsolete.

Not always, but sometimes it does. Cavalry charges aren't a thing anymore, for instance.

No but mechanised assaults are. Mounting up on a fast transport and charging the enemy lines is still a viable tactic, what changed is the horse got too vulnerable and the robots aren't cheap or fast enough yet.

Humm-Vees, Bradley's and other infantry mobility vehicles with mounted guns for fire support have very much stepped into the tactical role.

Re: The U.S. needs a shipbuilding revolution

#168

Post by lumost »

jabl wrote: post #129
throw0101c wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This will never succeed because the economies of scale are nonexistent without dominance in the commercial shipbuilding market. War planners should have pushed to repeal the Jones Act decades ago The US used to subsidize the salaries of US merchant marines on ships (US salaries are higher than Filipino ones) so that there would be a trained population, but that was stopped in the 1980s because subsidies are bad, so…

It seems an unintended side effect of the Jones act was to insulate the US shipbuilding industry from international competition, leading to them resting on their laurels while the rest of the industry worked hard to improve productivity (see Japan, South Korea, and lately China). Which makes it even harder to repeal, since with a repeal of the Jones act the wildly noncompetitive (civilian) US shipbuilding industry wo…

Are wages the principal component of “commodity” ship building? I’d have imagined equipment costs vastly exceed wages for building a relatively standard cargo ship.

Re: The U.S. needs a shipbuilding revolution

#169

Post by themaninthedark »

grey-area wrote: post #145
jonnybgood wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The only way the US will not respond militarily is if Taiwan chooses unification. By all accounts, Taiwan will not choose that. The US military has not been strategically shifting to the Indo-Pacific for more than 10 years now for no reason.

Trump is now in charge of the US and admires Xi and his dictatorship. He’ll find an excuse not to intervene or even better will pay peacemaker and trumpet how his intervention saved millions of lives and stopped a war by capitulating to China and refusing Taiwan aid. As he is doing in Ukraine. Since Trump is in I’d expect invasion later this year or next. After invasion the people of Taiwan won’t be choosing anything…

I get that it is easy to say that Trump admires dictators, he is such great friends with them, they have compromising information on him and he will allow them to do whatever they want, however, he was president before and during that time China did not invade Taiwan. Also during that time; Russia did not invade Ukraine.

Re: The U.S. needs a shipbuilding revolution

#170

Post by franktankbank »

lesuorac wrote: post #38
pzo wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Higher wages in theory should be linked in higher productivity and output per worker in the US due to deep skillsets I don't think this always have to be true, e.g. I'm polish and used work in uk and by crossing border to uk overnight I increased my salary 2-3x but that doesn't mean my productivity increased 2x. You want to google concept called "Dutch Disease", an economic phenomenon where a resource boom (like oi…

> You want to google concept called "Dutch Disease", an economic phenomenon where a resource boom (like oil) causes currency appreciation and decline in other sectors. Norway and the Netherlands faced this issue. Isn't this just the downside of comparative advantage? Like you have the classic example of island 1 can make 5 apples or 15 oranges and island 2 can make 15 apples or 5 oranges so island 1 makes 15 oranges…

Red Queen races are also terribly inefficient and that's a big part of our economy today. Unfortunately Red Queen races are net positive on GDP.
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