311–320 of 469 posts
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Why do you think the party allegiance will make a difference? I generally consider the republicans to be more likely to reach for military action, though the democrats have seemed pretty war hungry in the last decade or two as well.
Because one of them has a public bribe deposit box. China didn't buy all that $TRUMP coin by accident.
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There is a group of people who are convinced that the Jones Act is bad, either they have been mislead or another reason. From that, there is a shortcut to the reasoning that occurs: Intercostal shipping is expensive : Jones Act's fault Can't build ships fast enough : Jones Act's fault Ships are expensive ; Jones Act's fault The things that the Jones Act mandates are that: Shipping between American ports must be done…
My impression was that most opposition to the jones act was that it has not really worked, and as a side effect drastically reduced the intra-us shipping industry. Without the jones act, we would not have a ship building boom, but we probably would have more intra-US shipping via ship/rivers/etc.
>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,
From another discussion on the topic: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33263176
>>The Jones Act, and the reduction in demand that it triggered, hasn’t prevented
>>and in fact probably caused—the closure of 300 domestic shipyards since the >>early 1980s.
and from comments: >The problem is, the Jones Act has harmed our shipbuilding capacity as well.
>According to the artcle our ship building capacity is 1% of China's and US >built ships cost 6-8 times as much. That's not helpful.
So there is this narrative that if we just get rid of the restrictions, suddenly we will become competitive.
In another thread, someone mentioned that we just had an election between a TV personality and the other a fake persona : https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42931904 and how we need to stop electing elites.
That in a nutshell is why Trump was able to win, he is not viewed as an elite and everything he sets out to do, the elites are screaming "THAT WON"T WORK!!!". 3 years ago, the same establishment types were saying "No inflation", "Well...transitory inflation" to "Well, the rate of inflation is back to where we set our targets" and "GDP is at the highest levels ever!" while everyone is asking if we are stepping into a recession.
I don't agree with a lot of what he is doing, however I do agree that we need to do something different. Our previous leaders and policy makers set us on a path where labor is not valued, unions are despised and greed is good. You can't run a society without labor and protections(both for workers and environmental) and a strict focus on wealth alone leads you to a desolate place.
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When you protect industries you get Boeing, you don't get productive markets, you get zombie companies who can fail all day without consequences and still get contracts because they are the mandatory only choice.
I think the unfortunate end state from that line of thinking, is that the US as a country is a 'zombie', a hollowed out shell, where there are no industries left. The US can't compete purely on cost. We don't have the numbers of people, or education to keep up with the world. We'll end up being just a few financial and IT companies that only have corporate headquarters here, and the bulk of the work is off shore. Of…
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Airbus benefits from plenty of protectionist French/EU policies but don't seem to have the same issues that Boeing does
You mean you haven't observed the same issues Boeing has yet.
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> Let’s turn it around. How does keeping the Jones Act ensure a competitive shipbuilding industry in the US? We could easily subsidize the shipbuilders, pay for training programs, and so on. But blocking competition just keeps the market uncompetitive. Because the US can't "easily subsidize the shipbuilders, pay for training programs, and so on." It has an ideological dysfunction that prevents that. Even if you could…
>Because the US can't "easily subsidize the shipbuilders, pay for training programs, and so on." It has an ideological dysfunction that prevents that. Even if you could manage to get a program like that passed, there's a large chance it'd get cut in 10 years by some libertarian to pay for yet another tax cut. I need to weigh in on this, I think. I don't know of many libertarians that would refuse to make an exception…
It is, but our political system isn't wise enough to care. It's pissed away a lot of other strategic industries for stupid reasons in the mean time. And with the nationalization of politics, I'm not sure farm state senators will continue to have the ability to focus on serving their constituents' interests in the future like they have.
I don't share the confidence in large ships being the future of naval anything. Even in the 90s, surface ships were easy pickings for submarines and antiship missiles. Smaller ships acting as drone carriers combined with arsenal ships can allow local power projection to keep shipping lanes open. Submarines and aircraft remain the safest, and best way to deliver offensive firepower. The aircraft carrier does have a ro…
True, Hitler mostly lost a war due to megalomania and spending 1/4th of naval budget on big destroyer instead of producing more ubots.
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But submarines require a shipbuilding revolution too! The total number of submarines in US Navy service has been steadily decreasing over the last decade or so. We don't have the industrial capacity to build submarines faster than our old ones are decommissioning. The issue actually isn't with carriers, I believe we're more or less on schedule with carrier building. The issue where this is most apparent is submarines…
I'm not sure how much longer submarines will be militarily relevant. Longer for sure than large surface combatants, but we're relying largely on hiding for defense... and there's no guarantee that hiding will work forever.
I also think the concerns about the the ability of large ships to defend themselves in modern combat are a bit overblown. Just because there exists a weapon system that can defeat something, doesn't mean that thing is irrelevant. You'll see all these comparisons of the cost of a surface combatant with the cost of an anti-ship missile or drone as though that decides the matter. But it really doesn't. It costs a ton of money to train and equip and infantry soldier, and yet you can kill that solider with a bullet that costs pennies. Does that mean infantry have been obsolete for the last few centuries? Of course not! A system is not obsolete until something comes along that can perform that same role, but better.
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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…
> But there are shipyards in other high-income countries e.g. in Europe […] China is #1, but Korea is #2, and Japan is #3: * https://www.visualcapitalist.com/countries-dominate-global-s... Is Japan a low-wage country? Given that the US shipyards are 'full' with US Navy work, ordering a bunch of merchant marine ships from our allies would boost them and give us trust-worthy vessels. While civilian-like designs are bui…
>The average salary in Japan is 6,200,000 Japanese Yen (JPY) or 39818 USD per year in 2024 (as per the exchange rate in May 2024). https://www.timedoctor.com/blog/average-salary-in-japan
The low wages and overtime culture that exists there is the greatest contributor to their lack of marriage and low birthrate in my opinion.
Korea has the same issue from my understanding.
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> Given that the US shipyards are 'full' with US Navy work, ordering a bunch of merchant marine ships from our allies would boost them and give us trust-worthy vessels. Both Canada and Mexico would be obvious allies for this, and it would be a win/win solution for less sensitive ships / ship components (e.g. finish shell, then fit in US shipyards). > Another option would be to order civilian-like designs with a 'basi…
> Both Canada and Mexico would be obvious allies for this Yeah… https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2025_United_States_trade_war_w... > and it would be a win/win solution for less sensitive ships / ship components (e.g. finish shell, then fit in US shipyards). Canadian shipyards are actually relatively busy nowadays: * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Shipbuilding_Strategy To the point that some things will not be bu…
And for optics purposes, all he needs is "some win", not something that materially matters.
But as with all Trumpisms, we'll see. :\
I bring up Canada and Mexico because using their shipyard capacity (especially Mexico) would be a win-win: forex investment in heavy industry for them, competitive labor costs for the US, and the US Navy gets recapitalized.
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> But there are shipyards in other high-income countries e.g. in Europe […] China is #1, but Korea is #2, and Japan is #3: * https://www.visualcapitalist.com/countries-dominate-global-s... Is Japan a low-wage country? Given that the US shipyards are 'full' with US Navy work, ordering a bunch of merchant marine ships from our allies would boost them and give us trust-worthy vessels. While civilian-like designs are bui…
> Given that the US shipyards are 'full' with US Navy work, ordering a bunch of merchant marine ships from our allies would boost them and give us trust-worthy vessels. Both Canada and Mexico would be obvious allies for this, and it would be a win/win solution for less sensitive ships / ship components (e.g. finish shell, then fit in US shipyards). > Another option would be to order civilian-like designs with a 'basi…
The highest concern for the Navy isn't cost, it is will the ship survive in war. You can make a navy ship a lot cheaper by sacrificing armor and reliability. But those are thing the navy doesn't want to sacrifice. Cost is important, but it is at most #3 on the list of concerns.
Since I have family in the Navy, and want those ships to protect me if there is a war I agree with the navy. Cost is important, but it is not the most important thing.