[Gen.Blather]

I’ve seen estimates that The Jones Act costs the US billions of dollars in lost revenue. If a state wants to ship something to another state or along the rivers, it must do so using a very small fleet. The costs are prohibitive. Looking at who owns the ships and what nationality crews them looks good only from that one perspective. Look at the all-encompassing picture and see how much we are losing because of that one perspective. There needs to be a cost benefit analysis. What we are missing is the other side of the equation, the lost revenue from using foreign carriers, is never considered.

[Theoria]

That's also because our Navy provides protection thru out the world to all passages. Those foreign crews get safe passage while we subsidize the world. If we were picky and only decided to protect our fleets, perhaps we would have less foreign flags, while prices would probably moderate for such actions.

Those foreign flags don't have Navies or have to provide protections. Just look at how many carriers are established in the Caribbean, purely for taxes. They don't any concerns for protective expensive or labor concerns.

[Leaning Right]

> There needs to be a cost benefit analysis. <

You make some good points. Not saying you favored it, but those kinds of analyses is what got the shelves of Walmart filled with foreign junk while American factories were abandoned.

I don’t think there’s an easy solution to any of this. No one in this country wants to move an inch. Not the unions, not the government regulators, not the taxing authorities.

So the choice becomes between either a wildly expensive US source or a cheap foreign source.
🙁

[Cold Heart]

They don’t have to get rid of the Jones act, just crew them with illegal aliens. They work cheapest.