[QUOTE=JohnG;154370]The Jones Act is multifaceted and should be looked at as separate parts. There are building requirements and manning requirements.
Sen. McCainâs latest comments on the act entailed the cost of building ships in the US. The Linkedin post cited on this thread stated: âUS shipyards are some of the most expensive in the world, which leads to higher operating costs for these ships.â
Why is that? Modern cruise ships are among the most advanced vessels being built. They entail incredible amounts of engineering. Just think of getting plumbing to the cabins. Theyâre built in European yards. The EU, with a population about 1/3 more than the US, has many shipyards who do the great majority of their work on commercial ships. US yards are almost totally dependent on the DOD. European countries are certainly not low cost places to operate. Why canât US shipbuilding compete with other high cost countries?
To my knowledge, nobody has ever done a study on this. If you donât know why something is, you cannot take any steps to correct it.
Manning is the second part of the equation. I recall a MARAD study a few years ago that cited US manning costs to be 80% higher than non US flag. Again, why? While hiring a bunch of Philipinos will save money, that cannot explain any divergence in cost with European and other advanced countries. That MARAD study did not attempt to explain the âwhyâ. It simply stated the result of the study.
Itâs a shame that the US seems completely uninterested in the reason why the US has become so uncompetitive, in many areas, over a relatively short period of time. The one thing I have noticed is that the US seems very concerned with piling regulations and mandates on employers, from about a zillion different agencies. Then those same regs are often duplicated at state and local levels. All of that makes it very hard for companies to operate profitably compared to foreign competitors. That results in fewer good jobs while crumby jobs, like in discount store and burger joints, proliferate.[/QUOTE]
The reason is simple. US Deepsea shipping is too small of an industry. There are too few shipyards and most them specialize in high cost, high profit government contracts. There is no economy of scale. The US government does not heavily subsidize US shipping, shipbuilding, and ship equipment manufacturing the way European countries do. The US values the environment and worker safety, unlike Korea and China. Its not a level playing field. Foreign shipyards donât have to spend decades fighting environmental lawsuits every time the want to expand. Foreign shipyards are not responsible for cleaning up the mess left behind by others. 50 years ago. Asian shipyards donât have to pay much when workers are killed or injured, so workers are expendable. Korean shipyards only exist because the US has subsidized them by providing Koreaâs national defense for the past 70 years. If the US Government gave that same level of subsidy to US shipbuilding and US flag shipping, the US would have cost competitive shipyards and US flag ships.
Whatâs next, we could save a lot more money by letting foreign flag airlines fly US freight and passengers on domestic routes.
We could save a lot of money by allowing Mexican trucks to carry US goods on US routes.
We could save a lot of money by allowing 75 percent cheaper Mexican dentists to open offices in the US. And there is no need to stop there. The sky is the limit.
I just wonder how much welfare and unemployment programs would need to grow I wonder who is going to be left with a job to pay the taxes to support all these expanded welfare programs.