GOT Act meets Trump Income Tax cuts at Newsweek, and appearance on MetaCast

Also - I will be speaking soon in Washington DC.

I have a new piece out at Newsweek discussing President Trump’s policy proposal on removing income tax from overtime wages, and how if he paired it with passing the Guaranteeing Overtime for Truckers Act, the trucking industry just might solve its retention problem. The passing of these two ideas into reality would also save the taxpayer and insurance companies boatloads of money, though certain lobbyists will insist that its all impossible and might make inflation worse (with no evidence, of course.)


Read the whole thing here - https://www.newsweek.com/trumps-proposal-remove-taxes-overtime-almost-perfecthe-just-needs-include-truckers-opinion-1954663

Snippets -

If a future President Trump (or Harris!) were to implement both the GOT Act and the removal of taxes on overtime, a number of problems would be solved. Truckers would be paid the overtime pay we have been denied for over 80 years, and then those drivers, along with other workers in all sectors of the economy would have more money in our pockets to spend. Also, we would see way less turnover, and therefore less perceived necessity for the taxpayer to finance the seemingly endless training of new drivers. It might also help safety on the roads - new drivers are far more likely to be involved in collisions, and if we kept more experienced drivers on the road by paying them what they deserve and letting them keep all of their overtime pay, they would be far less likely to quit.

It just so happens that this week is Truck Driver Appreciation Week. Instead of spending money on advertising or companies hosting barbecues most truckers miss out on because they're on the road, let's instead embrace a policy change that would show some real support for drivers.

There is a certain type of spreadsheet brain ‘thinking’, if you can call it that, which does not want to acknowledge that more money in the pockets of working people is a good thing for everybody, and that less money being robbed from taxpayers to finance CDL mills is a bad thing, but those folks are beyond my reach, and also beyond my care.

I recently came across a statistic from an older piece at NPR which was addressing the truck driver shortage narrative and is not really a surprise to me, but is a pretty shocking number to the uninformed -

And according to the American Association of Motor Vehicle Administrators, state governments issue more than 450,000 new commercial driver's licenses every year.

You read that correctly - 450,000 new CDLs issued every year in the United States.

I have contacted the American Association of Motor Vehicle Administrators and requested a copy of whatever study or statistics they used to get that number. If you’ve been reading my output here for any length of time, you will understand that it’s a totally believable number, given the amount of money which the taxpayer gets hung for to solve this very fake problem.

The questions beg themselves when you consider that there are roughly 3.5 million jobs in America which require a CDL, many of those not even ‘trucking’ jobs, such as the kind of occupational small to medium size trucks which are used by tradesmen and other workers at utility companies and the like.

If 450,000 new CDLs enter the market every year … where are all of the people at the other end of the line going, and why are they quitting? Trucking, as many of you already know, has a massive retention problem, where some companies experience near or in excess of 100% driver turnover. When you see a number like this, and then also understand that many of those 450k of licenses were obtained through taxpayer funded programs, you ought to be asking why the trucking industry is such a massive corporate welfare case that instead of solving its own problems, has just been sticking its hand out for decades. To hell with that.


I discussed this, and many other problems, with Twitter Philosopher Anon Meta Prime on his wonderful program The MetaCast, as well as the situation with the Coutts guys, though I think we recorded this before sentencing came down last week.

EP XVI - Mother Tucking Freedom Loving Canadian

You can also listen on Spotify and many other podcast platforms.

And an announcement!

The fine folks at 10-4 DC have asked me to speak at their annual presentation on the National Mall in Washington, D.C. the first week of October. I’ll be on their stage on the Mall on Friday, October 4th, and would love to see you there while I discuss and attempt to clarify some of the narratives around the implementation of autonomous vehicle technology on our roads. I’m not much of a public speaker, but I do love meeting people in person, so if you’re in the neighborhood, come on out!

10-4 DC describe themselves thusly -

TenFour DC (tenfourdc.org) is an IRS 501(c)(3) recognized non-profit, designed to promote Professional Commercial Drivers. We are a widely diverse profession in our society hailing from every point on the map and every socio-economic background. 

We bring our trucks and show them off in a one of a kind Truck Driver Appreciation Event, on the National Mall in Washington DC,  this honor allows driver to be front and center on our National stage to honor their service for our Country. We are the first trucking group to be given this one of a kind opportunity to park bobtails on the National Mall between the Washington Monument and the Capitol Building, the biggest stage in the United States.

We create a family-friendly environment where we can tell our story to thousands of people with little-to-no knowledge of our industry.  We welcome questions, pose for pictures, take pictures, and focus on the educational opportunity.  We even bring the latest technology and safety-focused examples to demonstrate our commitment to future drivers as well.

I’ll send out a reminder here on Substack the week of.

Thanks again for reading and listening, and as always, questions, comments, suggestions, corrections and Hate Mail are welcomed and strongly encouraged - gordilocks@protonmail.com

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