How Hinckley Outlived 90 Years of American Boatbuilding Disasters

In nineteen ninety, the United States Congress passes a tax meant to punish the rich. A ten percent federal levy on every new boat sold for more than one hundred thousand dollars. The chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, Dan Rostenkowski, pushes it through with no boatbuilders in his Chicago district and a "soak the rich" slogan behind it. It passes one day before the November sixth elections. It takes effect on January first, nineteen ninety one. The rich do not pay it. They simply stop buying. Within the first year, one third of all American yacht-building companies stop production. The congressional Joint Economic Committee counts seven thousand six hundred jobs gone in twelve months. The tax was projected to raise thirty one million dollars. It raises sixteen point six. By the time it is repealed in nineteen ninety three, roughly twenty five thousand boatbuilding jobs have vanished, and seventy five thousand more in the companies that supply the parts. The tax aimed at the wealthy lands on the worker, and on the builder. At Pearson Yachts in Portsmouth, Rhode Island, the workforce drops from two hundred twenty to fifty, and the large-boat division files for bankruptcy. At Catalina, one of the nation's largest builders, the line that once turned out four Catalina Forty-Twos a week drops to one, and two hundred workers go home. Brunswick closes five plants in a single year and lays off nearly a thousand people. Genmar shutters two factories. OMC closes more than a dozen. In nineteen ninety two, Hurricane Andrew tears through the dealerships and marinas of Florida and Louisiana, then the costliest storm in American history, and finishes what the tax began.