Posted on 10/10/2017 8:04:04 AM PDT by Academiadotorg
Left-wing scholars, particularly in academe, make lots of attention getting assertions. Regrettably, they usually offer little in the way of illuminating evidence.
"In the midst of almost unimaginable horror in Puerto Rico, a bright light has shone on one of America's most unjustifiable and economically backward laws, the previously obscure Jones Act," Brink Lindsay and Steven Teles wrote on October 2, 2017 for Washington Monthly. "First created in the aftermath of World War I to buffer the impact of post-war demobilization, the Jones Act requires that all ships that carry cargo within the United States be built in America, with American crews."
"The cost to American consumers each year runs in the billions of dollars, with particularly large impacts on places like Hawaii and Puerto Rico that (unlike the mainland) depend almost exclusively on shipping for everything from food to fuel. What in normal times just increased prices on essential goods—bad enough for the poorest island-based Americans—has turned tragic."
It’s a good narrative introduction. Unfortunately, the only data, unsourced, that accompanies it, is that 2 percent of American shipping is protected by this law.
Lindsey is vice president and director of the Open Society Project at the Niskanen Center. Teles is associate professor of political science at Johns Hopkins University, and a senior fellow at the Niskanen Center.
Perhaps we need to read their book, Captured Economy. Teles' students may not have much choice.
Malcolm A. Kline is the executive director of Accuracy in Academia. He can be reached at mal.kline@academia.org.
One more person goes public demanding we outsource another sector of our economy.
Yep, take every job you can from U. S. Citizens. That’ll work.
The Jones Act is 100 years old. And it works. Leave it alone.
There’s a hole big enough to drive a Great Lakes freighter through in the Jones Act.
The steamship line formerly owned by US Steel is now owned by the Canadian National RR. The steamships move iron ore from Two harbors, MN to Gary, IN.
Plenty of aid reached Puerto Rico. It’s rotting on the docks because the PR trucking unions are refusing to move it.
I don’t think it matters so much who owns the ships, as long as they are US built and manned by US crews.
The Open Society Project is an original George Soros project
The Jones Act doesn’t make that distinction.
American Mariners Fret Over Attacks on Jones Act
Key sentence: "The union facility was once packed with students working their way up the ranks, but attendance has plunged as the number of U.S.-flagged, oceangoing freighters has fallen from nearly 3,000 in 1960 to fewer than 170 today."
The Jones Act has been a terrible tax on Alaska and Hawaii since its inception. It should be repealed! It is one of the oldest living laws that embodies crony capitalism. As an Alaskan I wish we get two laws changed; open ANWR and repeal the Jones Act!
The issue was the Teamsters Union refusing to deliver the thousands of truckloads of supplies, while they sought leverage in rate negotiations with the PR gov’t.
Why Vancouver instead of Seattle? Jones Act. Foreign vessel can't go from Seattle to Alaska. Allegedly it protects American jobs. But in this case it protected Canadian jobs. Stay overnight in Vancouver instead of Seattle on both ends of the cruise. Ship fueled and provisioned in Vancouver instead of Seattle. Sightseeing in Vancouver instead of Seattle before the cruise. The Jones Act simply transferred all the "tourist" money from Seattle to Vancouver. Nice going, guys.
Code: the PR’s can’t run there own country
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