Socialists like Kshama Sawant like to argue that market capitalism isn’t working for the rest of us. But I’m beginning to wonder if it is actually working at all:
The American Trucking Associations has estimated that there was a shortage of 30,000 qualified drivers earlier this year, a number on track to rise to 200,000 over the next decade. Trucking companies are turning down business for want of workers.
Yet the idea that there is a huge shortage of truck drivers flies in the face of a jobless rate of more than 6 percent, not to mention Economics 101. The most basic of economic theories would suggest that when supply isn’t enough to meet demand, it’s because the price — in this case, truckers’ wages — is too low. Raise wages, and an ample supply of workers should follow.
But corporate America has become so parsimonious about paying workers outside the executive suite that meaningful wage increases may seem an unacceptable affront. In this environment, it may be easier to say “There is a shortage of skilled workers” than “We aren’t paying our workers enough,” even if, in economic terms, those come down to the same thing.
Adjusted for inflation, truckers are now earning 6 percent less, on average, than they did a decade ago. And yet trucking executives would rather leave business on the table than raise pay to attract more truckers. “It takes a peculiar form of logic to cut pay steadily and then be shocked that fewer people want to do the job,” observes the New York Times’ Neil Irwin.
So much for supply and demand.
And its not just the trucking industry. As the housing market recovers, the construction industry is facing a looming worker shortage, even against the backdrop of persistent six-plus percent unemployment. Here in Washington State, produce is left rotting in the fields for want of enough farmworkers at harvest time. Pay them and they will come, Econ 101 teaches. But in industry after industry, the masters of capital simply refuse.
Whether through collusion, or habit, or sheer ill will, a labor market that effectively suspends the rule of supply and demand isn’t really a market at all. And if there is no functional labor market, then capitalism really isn’t working for the rest of us. Really. In fact, it is fair to question whether market capitalism is working at all. For surely there must be more to the promise of capitalism than the mere accumulation of capital.
Minimum wage opponents like to argue that wage floors distort the natural efficiencies of the market. But you can’t distort something that doesn’t exist.
“Whether through collusion, or habit, or sheer ill will, a labor market that effectively suspends the rule of supply and demand isn’t really a market at all. And if there is no functional labor market, then capitalism really isn’t working for the rest of us. Really. In fact, it is fair to question whether market capitalism is working at all.”
Capitalism doesn’t work and this is exactly why. You’re trying to argue from a homo economicus perspective that has no grounding in reality; capitalism per se is all about wealth extraction from the working class, and here we see wealth being extracted from the working class.
“For surely there must be more to the promise of capitalism than the mere accumulation of capital.”
There never has been, only extraction and a myth being sold to us. Stop buying it.
Perhaps the reason truckers are earning 6% less than they did a decade ago is because they are driving fewer miles than they used to drive:
For example, new safety requirements mean that individual truckers drive fewer miles than a decade ago: An average long-haul truck can now cover 8,000 miles a month, down from almost 11,000 in 2007, according to the trade association. This helps account for downward wage pressure.
Yes it does.
On a per-mile basis, trucker pay might have even gone up if their miles driven have declined that much, no?
Fewer miles driven per truck driver means more truck drivers needed to drive the necessary number of miles. If safety, or whatever, has placed limits on miles driven, that might also put a cap on money available to pay truckers.
And the trucking companies themselves are typically working on thin profit margins and serving customers on long-term contracts, which means that if they simply raised pay sharply to recruit more truckers, they could end up losing money.
Truckers doing less work than they used to do are paid less than they used to make. Sounds like the model works the way it used to, and should.
@2 That is beside the point. Trucking companies are leaving money on the table for want of truckers. And yet they refuse to raise compensation to attract more truckers. That’s not the way the labor market is supposed to work.
Let’s discuss the public employee labor market around here.
One good indicator is its health is how much represented public employees pay in dues to their unions.
Let’s see what you democrats know about that subject. Identify the ten largest public employee unions in this state, and provide the figures for how much dues revenue they confiscated COLLECTIVELY (see what I did there!) during each of the past five years.
The public employee labor market is doing A-OK when measured by dues revenue growth, right? The private sector labor markets . . . not so much. But hey, that’s life.
Oh, and don’t say “Public sector unions shouldn’t disclose their dues revenue growth figures because [X].” [X] is bullshit.
@ 3
Are those companies able to charge more because their availability is limited? Supply, demand. You know.
Are you so absolutely sure that there is a strong across-the-board interest in hiring more truckers, if an alternative is to charge more to transport with the ones you’ve already got?
It’s not wholly beside the point to mention the influence of an outside distortion (safety-driven limits on trucker work hours) on a labor market when the threat post title has to do with distortions in a labor market.
I concur with Big Boss @1.
re 5: When truckers first get into the business, they are often paid by the mile; but as they gain experience, many go on salary. Also, many truckers load and unload their own cargo, and this is something that is paid for by the hour, generally.
On the surface, your claim about safety and fewer miles being driven as being the cause of truckers making less money makes sense. But as with most of your arguments, it lacks depth and nuance because you only look for enough information to support your Johnny-One-Note ideology.
I was making $15 an hour just working on the loading dock of a freight company — in 1999. And there was lots of overtime.
The argument is
Truckers could make more money if they could just be worked longer and less safely?
As in
Fast Food workers could make more money if they could just be worked longer and less safely?
Farm workers could make more money if they could just be worked longer and less safely?
Airline Pilots workers could make more money if they could just be worked longer and less safely?
Doctors could make more money if they could just be worked longer and less safely?
I see the conservative logic.
In this environment, it may be easier to say “There is a shortage of skilled workers” than “We won’t pay the workers enough to attract more skilled workers”….
As in, the cheap labor types want rig the economy to get scared hungry potential workers to work for even less.
It’s more profitable to turn down the work than raise wages allowing them to hire more skilled workers to be able to take the work.
It’s all about profits, not a jobs program.
@8 as a salary employee the longer I work the less I make. That’s why I learned long ago, anything beyond 40 hours is enough for me, unless my employer truly needs me for some emergency. I use to put in 50 hours or more and I didn’t get paid any more money.
I don’t work for a unionized company, the biggest complaint of the new young guns is that they work too much and they are tired of it, they got families is there biggest complaint. Some who complain are even on bonus structure, me I’m not on any bonus structure.
The more I work the less I make.
@8
No, the argument is that there are reasons that employed truckers may earn less now than they earned before. Reasons that have nothing to do with the economy. It might not have the nuance and depth @ 7 that some require but if there is a pool of revenue allocated to wages and that has to be spread over more employees because each employee is forced to produce less than they used to produce, the money each employee will be paid probably is less than when they were permitted to produce more.
@12 that is wierd, my employer wants me to do more and they want to pay me less. They expect more with less and for as low as they can’t get more. No big pool of money that they are willing to share with employees, they look at it as more profit, or maintaining a profit level due to a shrinking economy. The only Pool of money that they do share is called profit sharing at the end of the year, which has been pretty stable, it never goes up astronomically in better years, again they look at the better days as more profit, especially if they can make me do more for less. They shrank the work force but want more from a smaller work force.
They didn’t say, you know what we have less people now so let’s make less money. No they want more profit, which means more work, but with less people.
Where have you been? Stories about how certain industries “lack” qualified workers have been on the radar for at least five years.
What’s particularly rage-inducing for me are the manufacturing jobs that have been coming back. Since these jobs have so much automation, the factories need skilled workers. These workers have to get a couple years of vocational training (that they pay for themselves) and, since the training is very specialized, the extra education they get doesn’t really translate to any other jobs. Meanwhile, these fucking asshole factory owners are offering starting wages of $10/hour in a non-union factory. And then they have the gall to whine that they “can’t” find any takers.
re 12: Working safely (shorter hours being a piece of that package) is cheaper than working too many hours in an occupation that is extremely physically demanding. The only way that working people too many hours and causing a lot of damage to people and products is functional to a business owner is to externalize the damage you wreak as an employer.
You’ll never hear such loud lamenting of workers getting a free lunch as from the employers who have a bad rating with safety and consequently have to pay a lot in workers comp.
To just stick to your simplistic ‘miles is money’ Mantra is moronic. And yes, your argument does lack depth and nuance. I’d hate to be on the receiving end of some of your medical opinions.
And the shitty ones, they don’t know how to stay in business becasue they like to live the big life, and then they go bankrupt, while keeping the mercedes and the mansion. I’d like to know how Donald Trump can have some much wealth but have been bankrupt on I think 3 occassions? Did all his creditors get what they were owed?
Goldy is researching becoming a teamster?
Yeah, this is becoming standard not just in the Trucking industry.
An entry level job in the industry I left a decade ago now expects an applicant to have abilities that traditionally were learned while working. You would start doing more basic tasks while management trained you on much more sophisticated equipment either by shipping you off to a training class for a week or spending several days on site. Further shifting operating cost away from the business and onto labor the prosepctive employee now needs to have invested several thousand dollars into their own equipment and several more thousand dollars in training and time before you can even get an interview. You used to go to your work site and use the equipment they owned. Now, if you don’t have a certain item that costs $6500 that you can rent to the employer as part of your rate…forget it. And by the way, any student loans you may have in order to train yourself, the interest rate is far higher than it was five years ago.
But that’s the natural order of things for conservatives. You can pull yourself up by your bootstraps after you overpay us for the straps, the boots, the socks we require so you don’t get our boots stinky and you need to walk 400 miles in them to get used to it before you can start pulling.
What do we do to change the system?
What needs to be changed, to be regulated, to be forced on industry, to make it fair?
@2 “If safety, or whatever, has placed limits on miles driven”
Well, lo and behold, Doctor Bob actually nailed it this time. Yes, truckers falling asleep at the wheel is a problem.
http://southtownstar.suntimes......-qZaI3KbQc
Now let’s see if Bob is clever enough to realize that some things (e.g., lives) are more important than money.
Before entering Nursing school, I seriously looked at truck driving. The pay just didn’t justify it, especially for west-coast trucking (you can do a lot better in the midwest, supposedly).
Per-mile pay means that if you want to make the money the companies advertise, you have to speed constantly, putting your CDL at significant risk of suspension (traffic tickets for truckers are not the mere slap-on-the-wrist they are for commuters). It means that you’ll be doing loading/unloading for free, and counting that load/unload time as a “rest break”. And it means making less than minimum wage when sitting in passenger-car congestion.
There are several ways to get paid for driving a truck. A common arrangement is for the trucker to own a truck and get paid per mile to haul cargoes for shipping companies. The bargaining power is so one-sided the shipping companies can impose rock-bottom mileage rates despite a driver shortage. The rates are so low drivers can’t even cover their costs when fuel prices are high; that’s when you see trucker protests in D.C. and state capitols. At all times, the drivers have to work long hours just to make a marginal living, and that’s not safe for the general public, because driver fatigue is ubiquitous in the industry. The heartless shipping companies don’t give a damn about that; their execs only care about profits and their own pay packages.
Goldy’s onto something here, but he’s wrong about market capitalism. The problem isn’t with market capitalism; the problem is we don’t have market capitalism. We’re becoming like Russia, with an economy of rigged markets under the command of influence-buying oligarchs and influence-peddling politicians.
Today’s America has few truly competitive markets. As we saw just a couple days ago in headline news, the technology giants colluded to eliminate labor competition in their industry, which forced their employees to work for below-market pay (and, when the companies got caught, they were allowed to settle with the workers for 10 cents on the dollar). The problem truck drivers, tech engineers, chicken farmers, and other workers face is not so much the defects of market capitalism as the sabotage of market capitalism by corrupt corporatism.
Restoring market capitalism probably would be good for most workers. That requires reigning in corporate power and rooting out corporate corruption. We could revoke the charters of misbehaving corporations if the political will is there. Given decent election results, the Supreme Court’s bought justices eventually can be replaced with judges who will work for the people instead of taking marching orders from lobbyists. I believe we already have plenty of jurors willing to send crooked CEOs to jail if prosecutors bring cases and judges let them go to juries. But we have to make the people’s demands known, loudly and often.
Like any cancer that has gone untreated for a long time, you can’t solve the illness afflicting American capitalism by trimming the edges; you have to hit the rotten tissue with major doses of chemo and radiation to kill the corrupt cells.
That means jailing people, bankrupting companies, and revoking charters. It means making corrupt corporations die. You have to kill cancers; you can’t settle for getting 10% of your body back and expect to survive in the long run.
Roger @22: Well done. Really well stated. I’m saving this to savor.
“Roger @22: Well done. Really well stated. I’m saving this to savor.”
Agree….
Well, in that case, I should clean it up with judicious editing and repost it in a version suitable from framing:
There are several ways to get paid for driving a truck. A common arrangement is for the trucker to own a truck and get paid per mile to haul cargoes for shipping companies. The bargaining power is so one-sided the shipping companies can impose rock-bottom mileage rates despite a driver shortage. These rates are so low drivers can’t even cover their costs when fuel prices are high; that’s when you see trucker protests in D.C. and state capitols. Even in the best of times, the drivers have to work long hours just to make a marginal living, and that’s unsafe for the general public, because driver fatigue is ubiquitous in the industry, and accident statistics reveal a sharp rise in truck-car collisions. The heartless shipping companies don’t give a damn about that; their execs only care about profits and their own pay packages.
Goldy’s onto something here, but he’s wrong about market capitalism. The problem isn’t with market capitalism; the problem is we don’t have market capitalism. We’re becoming like Russia, with an economy of rigged markets controlled by influence-buying oligarchs and influence-peddling politicians.
Today’s America has few truly competitive markets. As we saw just a couple days ago in headline news, the technology giants colluded to eliminate labor competition in their industry, which forced their employees to work for below-market pay (and, when the companies got caught, they were allowed to settle with the workers for 10 cents on the dollar). The problem truck drivers, tech engineers, chicken farmers, and other workers face is not defective market capitalism but sabotage of market capitalism by corrupt corporatists.
Restoring market capitalism probably would be good for most workers. That requires reigning in corporate power and rooting out corporate corruption. We could revoke the charters of misbehaving corporations if the political will is there. Given decent election results, the Supreme Court’s bought justices eventually can be replaced with judges who will work for the people instead of lobbyists. I believe we already have plenty of jurors willing to send crooked CEOs to jail if prosecutors bring cases and judges let these cases go to juries. But we have to make the people’s demands known, loudly and often.
Like any cancer that has gone untreated for a long time, you can’t cure the illness afflicting the American economy by scraping off the dead skin; you have to bombard the rotten living tissue with large doses of chemo and radiation to kill all the corrupt cells.
That means jailing people, bankrupting companies, and revoking corporate charters. It means making corrupt businesses die. You have to kill cancers; you can’t negotiate with them or settle for getting 10% of your body back and expect to survive in the long run.
There are several ways to get paid for driving a truck. A common arrangement is for the trucker to own a truck and get paid per mile to haul cargoes for shipping companies. The bargaining power is so one-sided the shipping companies can impose rock-bottom mileage rates despite a driver shortage. These rates are so low drivers can’t even cover their costs when fuel prices are high; that’s why you see trucker protests in D.C. and state capitols. Even in good times, drivers have to work long hours just to make a marginal living, and that’s unsafe for the general public, because driver fatigue is ubiquitous in the industry, and accident statistics confirm a sharp rise in truck-car collisions. The heartless shipping companies don’t give a damn about that; their executives only care about profits and their own pay packages.
Goldy’s onto something here, but he’s wrong about market capitalism. The problem isn’t with market capitalism; the problem is we don’t have market capitalism. We’re becoming like Russia with an economy of rigged markets controlled by influence-buying oligarchs and influence-peddling politicians.
Today’s America has few truly competitive markets. As we saw in the headlines just a few days ago, the technology giants colluded to eliminate labor competition in their industry, forcing their employees to work for below-market pay (and, when the companies got caught, they were allowed to settle with the workers for 10 cents on the dollar). The problem truck drivers, tech engineers, chicken farmers, and other workers face is not defective market capitalism but the sabotage of market capitalism by corrupt corporatists.
Restoring market capitalism probably would be good for most workers. That requires reigning in corporate power and rooting out corporate corruption. We could revoke the charters of misbehaving corporations if the political will is there. Given decent election results, the Supreme Court’s present bought justices eventually can be replaced with judges who will work for the people instead of for lobbyists. I believe we already have plenty of jurors willing to send crooked CEOs to jail if prosecutors bring cases and judges let these cases go to trial. But we have to make the people’s demands known, loudly and often.
Like any cancer that has gone untreated for a long time, you can’t cure the illness afflicting the American economy by scraping off dead skin; you have to bombard the rotten living tissue with large doses of chemo and radiation to kill all the corrupt cells.
That means jailing people, bankrupting companies, and revoking corporate charters. It means making corrupt businesses die. You have to kill cancers; you can’t negotiate with them or settle for getting 10% of your body back and still expect to survive in the long run.
Before any troll gripes about “multiple posts,” I’d just like to say Hemingway revised his writing multiple times, so why can’t I do that too? If anything, I need MORE editing privileges than he was given, because I’m not as good a writer as he was.
A GREAT indicator of the health of public employment in these parts is looking at the amounts public employees pay in dues to their unions.
Let’s see what you democrats know about that subject.
Identify the ten largest public employee unions in this state, and provide the figures for how much dues revenue they as a group confiscated during each of the past five years.
The SEIU local represents workers who receive public money, right? Should it be counted among the top ten?
The same is true for the so-called H-1 B worker shortage.
@28
“provide the figures for how much dues revenue they as a group confiscated during each of the past five years”
Probably a lot less than the US Chamber of Commerce “confiscates” from its members.
@28
“provide the figures for how much dues revenue they as a group confiscated during each of the past five years”
Maybe the solution to the dues problem would be to have the non-dues-paying workers negotiate their own wage and benefits package as individuals. Workers who don’t want to pay union dues but want the benefits that union negotiators bring to them are hypocrites who only want a free ride.
I went to the source and found that in the Swift stockholder letter they said they’re going to boost compensation to address recruitment and retention problems, and will also be raising prices as a result. That looks like an expected market outcome to me, and directly contradicts the statement that execs would rather lose business than raise pay. Here’s the letter, the bit on comp is on page 2: http://investor.swifttrans.com....._Final.pdf
re 32 — Understood. It would seem to indicate that Swift, at least, is trying to address the wage issue. However, to actually do the math on how much additional money the rate increase would bring in as opposed to how much the raised wages would actually cost would be in order before deciding that the employers are acting in good faith.
Mark Twain, a professional river pilot on the Mississippi, told the story of a pilots’ strike for higher wages that the river boat company was forced to deal with — and the company agreed to raise wages but simultaneously raised the rates for freight and passenger service.
Twain pointed out that the raise in pay was a pittance to the company but the rate increase raked in many times over what they had to pay the pilots — but they blamed the increase on the greedy pilots.
Just a word of caution before taking management’s side.
@28, @30 Probably also less than a single CEO of a Fortune 500 company is paid in a year.
@33 The one thing you can almost always count on is there will be some sort of trickery, deception, and subterfuge on the employer’s side. Another factor making labor negotiations an unequal playing field is workers have to negotiate with shameless liars and crooks.
In ten years self driving car technology will be adapted to the long haul trucking industry and Limbaugh will convince all those laid off truckers that the liberals got them fired.
@36 — That thing that Limbaugh had installed on his head looks like a valve on a pressure cooker.
@12 Funny thing is, corporate profits have skyrocketed. Investors like me have never had it so good. If there’s less revenue to spread among workers, it’s because more of it is being allocated to profit.