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I don't find this explanation satisfying. If the Jones Act of 1920 is at fault, how do we explain the timeline? The U.S. was a ship-building powerhouse at least
by allturtles 2y ago
I don't find this explanation satisfying. If the Jones Act of 1920 is at fault, how do we explain the timeline? The U.S. was a ship-building powerhouse at least through the 50s, if not through the 70s. Why was there a multi-generation lag between the Jones Act and its effects?
- ViewTrick1002 2y agoIncreasing wages and the service economy. For other high income nations the ship building industry has specialized on higher tech vessels while leaving the enormous labor intensive container ships to South Korea and now lately China.
- xyzzyz 2y agoThe rest of the world was in total shambles until 1960s. Europe was destroyed by two world wars. East Asia was an economic backwaters. Same was true about most of South America, and its advanced regions were underpopulated compared to US. Africa was and is Africa. There was simply no other place that could build stuff at scale.
- joshuacc 2y agoThis article covers a lot of the history. https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/why-cant-the-us-build-ships https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/why-cant-the-us-build-ships Basically the US wasn’t great at shipbuilding post civil war due to high costs. WWII was an existential threat so cost was no object, and we coasted on that capacity for a long time.
- allturtles 2y agoThanks for the link. That article doesn't really support the GP's contention that the Jones Act is the root cause of the U.S.' shipbuilding failures.