Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: combjelly who wrote (361248)	12/3/2007 5:29:17 PM
From: TimF	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1574483

The amount of steel is minuscule compared to the supply. So whether or not a carrier's worth of steel is taken off the market is in the "no noticeable blip" category. And the cost of the steel is only a small part of the cost of the carrier. I was just giving one example. A carrier is far more than a lump of steel. A lot of other resources go in to it, esp. labor ranging from fairly skilled to very skilled. And even the steel does represent a real cost. The fact that its a small fraction of the steel used in the US is irrelevant. The amount of gasoline I burn driving to work is an even smaller fraction of the gasoline used in the US, but if I use the resource that much is unavailable to others, and my use does put a small upward pressure on the price of gasoline. So the primary customer for US shipyards is the US Navy. So the only one bearing any cost because of displaced labor is the Navy itself. So it becomes a scheduling issue for them. If the US Navy built less ships than you would need less resources devoted to US shipyards. Less people would be employed building ships, less metal, plastic, electronics, explosives, fuel, nuclear material, etc. would be used. Less people would work maintaining, repairing, operating, and supplying the ships. These resources would be freed up for other purposes, some resources could shift quickly, others would take awhile, others would take a long time, but sooner or later the resources would be freed up. The only reason to have the spending is the believe that the ships, and other systems, are useful enough to be worth the expense. A good case can be made that they are, certainly I don't want the navy to stop building ships, and I guess you wouldn't either. But that doesn't mean the process doesn't have a high cost. The ships do have a benefit, but the benefit doesn't reduce the cost even if it more than justifies it. So take the benefit out of the picture in order to see the cost. Lets say as soon as we create the next aircraft carrier we recycle it. That would obviously be an expensive waste of resources. It would not be something that helps the US economy. No recycling process gives you back 100% of the initial input, even if you don't count labor, but the biggest loss would be the labor (including the labor of sub-contractors and sub-sub contractors. Sure a program of building more aircraft carriers and then immediately recycling them would create business opportunities, but it would be a net subtraction from the economy, just as paying people to dig holes and paying other people to fill them in would be.

To: combjelly who wrote (361248)	12/3/2007 5:37:01 PM
From: bentway	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 1574483

Modern anti ship missilery has advanced quite a bit since the Argentines sank a British destroyer with the Exocet in the Falklands war. The Iranians just bought a bunch of THESE: kursk.strana.ru ..and they already had a lot of these: rense.com Which may be why we aren't talking so much trash to Iran anymore. Some people are even wondering if the aircraft carrier is to now what the battleship was to WW II - a big, expensive target you spend more energy protecting than using.