Senate Bill Would Require U.S. Flag Ships to be U.S. Built [Shipping]

We can pass this bill and hold it out as an example to the rest of the world.

That way, the European Union can only allow aircraft built in Europe to fly between European airports. India can require only operating systems written in India to be used on Indian government computers. Japan can require that only microprocessors designed in Japan can be used in hospital equipment.

Let the rest of the world put their money into R&D while Congress goes about protecting American jobs. /sarc

To make it work, you have to find a market-based solution to the problem, or you help invite the government into managing your industry for you.

Michigan killed the auto industry because they were not a right to work state. If they were, and the union overstepped their power, membership would have deserted the union a long time ago. If GM,Ford,Chrysler abused their workers, then membership climbs, and you get a strike.

And anything the gov’t manages turns into a POS. I know that. Education is a prime example. Even at the state level, gov’t can seem to educate people with 12 straight years of school. Still have to go to remedial classes in college.

But I am not sure the market can fix all problems. Japan used to have this thing about growing their own rice. Economically the land was probably more productive building SONY plants on it. The cost differential would have paid for a lot of rice. But if you are an island nation, don’t you need to be able to grow your own food or risk starvation?

I thought a lot of GMs production was moved out of Michigan. I do think the unions there killed the golden goose. That and some crappy over-priced products that could not match Toyota’s. GM was just too big for anybody to run right.

parsy, who doesn’t know it all about this stuff.

It's not so much that we shipped manufacturing overseas as we forced manufacturing out of the U.S. Making the decision to do business in U.S. or another country is a complicated equation. Lower wages are offset by higher shipping cost, increased inventory cost (takes longer to put product on market after manufacture), language/cultural manufacturing troubles (T-shirts with misspelled words that were meant for export can be bought for next to nothing on the streets in Thailand) and of course someone like Chavez deciding to nationalize your investment...the list is almost endless.

It's a serious mistake to view jobs (or capital) as "ours", something that belongs collectively to a nation. Make no mistake it's not your job, my job or our neighbors job. Jobs belong to the men and women that own the business. Leave those that produce alone to the greatest extent feasible and their will be employment.

It is complicated. For egs, most guitars sold in US are built overseas, now in china and korea. They are brought here and sell for a heck of a lot less than most American made guitars. The quality isn’t bad. So, as a guitar player (not a good one) I prosper. But my fellow citizens, who used to have a job doing this, are SOL.

Now if they moved to an equivalent job, say manufacturing furniture or rebuilding engines, maybe nobody gets hurt. But what if they are forced into a frippery job, like selling $79 Nike shoes at the mall. then we lose a skilled job for a frippery job. (frippery is a real word. I invented the term “frippery slope” FWIW)

If this happens enough, the economics may all seem to work but something sinister is happening to our country. We are becoming a nation of frippery job holders and any stiff wind will blow us away.

Now suppose that the unemployed guitar makers, wood workers, get jobs related to guitars. Cheaper guitars should drive the demand up, so there will be more guitar stores, more truck drivers to carry the guitars from LA to say Memphis. You may not see an immediate job loss. But when times get bad, guitar sales go down so now a guy who used to be a wood worker, or worse still, if there has been enough time passed, always sold Chinese guitars and never learned how to use machinery, is out of work. And what is he good for? Selling stuff at a store, which is low skill job.

So when it comes to the economic aspect, I see how quantitatively, the numbers work on this. But I think there is a qualitative aspect that we will have a hard time measuring. We may see it, but it is going to be hard to put into numbers.

I know that as an American, my country is surrounded on three sides by water. I would rather have a 100,000 guys around who know how to build ships, then I would a 100,000 guys who know how to make a simply superb Cafe Latte’.

parsy, who wonders if this is understandable

The root problem is the belief that men can't to a very great extent be left to conduct their own affairs. That doom is always looming and without giving up more of our natural rights to allow ever greater social/economic engineering all will be lost.

The U.S. is culturally, geographically, etc one of the best places in the world to conduct business. Our increasing tendencies to believe more government intervention can make our lives better negates our positive attributes. We're Americans...we should embrace the ideals of enturpertership and comparative advantage and reject interventionism and collectivism. That's how we did it before.

On education, my experience is that you can lead horses to water, but can’t make them drink.

I’ve seen this evidenced in my military life, where D students become A students because Uncle Sam decided to put a boot up their ass for the first time in their lives.

Education tends to work on kids who have some semblance of parenting. Where there’s no parenting, education tends to be a hit-or-miss proposition.

Just my observation. I’m public school educated, from HS through college. Spent the first 8 years in Catholic School. No contest - public school was better in almost every respect.

In fact, you could hand me 8 years at Harvard at no charge to me, and I’d take a military academy education every time. Same with the better private schools, at least in my area.

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