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Nightly Ramble: 18 Wheelers are Sweatshops?

I’m in Mountain Top Pennsylvania this evening, getting ready to take yet another load into the Bronx in the morning. The truck continues to behave as it should, and I’m quite pleased.

The weather today is absolutely gorgeous. Sunshine, blue skies, 70 degrees.

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I note with a chuckle and a shake of the head an oped in the New York Times which suggests that 18 wheelers are nothing but sweat shops. You can read it here [2], but frankly I’d keep a barf bag handy. It’s my thought you will probably need it.
I find it fascinating that their response seems to indicate that the only solution is additional regulation of an industry that has already been just about regulated to death.

The New York Times has made its living for over a century decrying a condition that they choose to write about within a particular industry, calling for additional regulation and when that additional regulation kills off the jobs related to that industry crying that we no longer have any jobs in the United States.

Apparently, they, (even the token Republican on the New York Times staff, David Brooks), can’t find it in themselves to understand that the regulations that they called for are causing the very conditions that they decry.

And of course, they wonder why they have no credibility with an increasing number of Americans.

The trucking industry is hardly alone in this phenomena. Witness if you will the automobile industry in this country, which in my view is drowning under the weight of over-regulation over taxation and over unionization. How did the government respond to the bankruptcy or near bankruptcy is off the automobile industry? Did they lower the amount of regulations and red tape did they lower the amount of Union demands? No, they nationalized the Industries. Took over the companies, Lock Stock & Board Room.

Ponder as well the passenger railroad industry in this country. The past is strikingly similar. In the middle seventies, the regulation Burden had gotten to the point where the major railroads were going broke. Government killed the goose that laid the golden egg. And so what happens? Government steps in takes over the then bankrupted railroads, nationalizing them which to this day still serves an agonizingly small number of riders, mostly in the big government Northeast and in Washington DC. Ever heard of the Northeast Corridor?

If you’re beginning to detect a pattern here, then you have foreseen what will happen to the trucking industry if we don’t get government back into its constitutional box.

And the country?

If we don’t break this pattern, we’re going to lose her.

Down the road I go. I’ll see you tomorrow.