Good Day, everyone.
I wanted to share with you an article published yesterday by the folks over at the American Institute for Economic Research (AIER), who, when I asked them to put me in touch with one of their writers, had a browse of my own work, and then asked me to submit a little something for them.
Success can often be attributed to saying ‘Yes’ to basically everything, so of course I accepted their generous invitation.
Thanks to Laura Williams at AIER for the invite and editing.
Please go and have a look -
Driver Shortage? Not so fast.
A few pull quotes -
Scratch beneath the surface of the ad copy for any truck driver training school, or local and state-funded retraining programs, and government grants and subsidies become immediately apparent. From funds doled out by The Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act (WIOA) to Pell Grants to $47 million in extra funding from the Biden Administration, it is clear that the trucking industry is awash in taxpayer largesse.
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The ATA and its membership have come up with a not-so-novel method of replacing drivers who are continually hanging up the keys — sending the bill for truck-driver training to the taxpayer, a method which has allowed them to get lazy and not solve their own problems.
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It is pretty clear that what is unseen by many, and deliberately made and kept that way, is a system of corporate welfare which undergirds a critical aspect of the nations supply chain. The fatal consequences, per the Bastiat dictum, are less safe roads and an unnatural depression of wages, which have many second-order effects on the economy.
Go have a read, it’s a little under 1200 words.
As always, not nearly enough to go really deep on any issue, but you’ll get the gist of it.
Under our bloated technocratic managerial state, where every new regulation and government program is going to bring us one step closer to Utopia, I would submit to you the opposite - we can actually correct many problems in the trucking industry with this one simple trick - turning the tap off for a system of stealth corporate welfare that is deceptively sold to us as a jobs program meant to ‘solve’ a problem which doesn’t actually exist.
There is no shortage of truck drivers in America, at least as advertised to us. What there is a shortage of are politicians and media willing to be more skeptical of claims made about a supposedly perpetual problem that isn’t real, and a shortage of those willing to think outside the box about the real nuances involved.
There is also a severe shortage of people willing to say ‘No.’
A constant flow of new, taxpayer funded drivers does nothing but decrease road safety, suppress wages, and water down the overall quality level of the truckers that Hollywood once spent a decade making movies about.
Expect a much deeper dive piece on this issue in the coming months, at a marquee mainstream publication who shall remain nameless for now.
Questions, comments, suggestions, and Hate Mail are welcomed and encouraged
gordilocks@protonmail.com
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