Darth Wong wrote:Broomstick wrote:Darth Wong wrote:They're probably striking against the government. They want the government to subsidize fuel costs so they can continue to perpetuate inefficient business models and unrealistic costs. It's the same thing farmers have done for decades.
Except that the trucking industry has actually been adapting its business models and cost-cutting for quite some time. What's making it "inefficient" right now
really is the rising cost of fuel - that's a factor they can't control, and they're caught between paying the bills and consumers howling about rising prices.
Too bad. They have to raise their prices and deal with customer anger, then. If trucking companies are perfectly willing to work for less money than it costs to operate their business, government should not subsidize this stupidity.
Actually, the trucking companies
won't operate at a loss, they'll just disappear. Normally that sort of shake-out benefits the survivors long-term, but only if there are survivors.
Granted, trucking our shit everywhere IS stupid on a certain level, but when fuel was cheap it was more efficient (by the bottom line) to do that than to keep producing locally so shipping distances would be shorter. From the 80's onwards it was all about costs and consolidation, resulting in our current system where fuel below a certain price is essential to keeping it running. It's fine to say something else would have made more sense, but as usuall it was all short-term planning and just looking at the bottom line and you'd better turn a profit every quarter or lose the business. Which now results in a system that is feeling the fuel price squeeze and only exacerbating economic problems.
And why can't they simply raise their prices in accordance with rising fuel costs? There's a real disconnect here: is there some reason why they cannot act like any other business and raise their prices when their own costs increase? Yes, prices for various goods will increase as well; that is inevitable and there is no reason why the government or anyone else should try to quixotically pretend it can prevent this by subsidizing everyone who wants to forestall reality.
First, NOWHERE did I post that there should be a government subsidy. I just wanted to make that clear that I am not proposing anything of the sort, even if other people are.
Second - raising the price only works if the customer has money to spend. Right now, my income is severely limited and, after the beginning of May, I will have NO income whatsoever unless I can get a job - which I have been able to do only sporadically since November. The Other Half and I have already discussed which possessions we would sell off in which order if things became truly desparate, in order to stave off homelessness and losing literally everything but the clothes on our backs. Millions of others are in a similar position. Just how much of a price raise do you think these people can tolerate? If a loaf of bread costs $3 and you have only 2 you can't buy a loaf of bread. If the grocery store can't sell bread at a price enabling them to cover costs they don't stay in business. At that point, the truckers lose
their customers. When a higher percentage of everyone's income is going towards food, housing, and fuel there is less to spend on other stuff - so
those businesses start to go under, which leads to more unemployed people on fixed or no incomes....
That's why I said it was a downward spiral. There's a bottom down there somewhere, but where I don't know. I doubt anyone else does, either.
Really, the US has entered into a downward spiral where what the UK folks can "knock-on" effects just keep making things worse. A rising tide may not lift ALL boats but a sinking one sure as hell slams every keel into the sandy bottom.
I've always hated that "rising tide lifts all boats" analogy. Nobody ever asks what happens to the people who are too poor to buy a boat.
Yes, and there are more and more people in the uS losing their "boats".
It ranks right there with the "trickle down" theory, which always sounded to me like the folks on the bottom get pissed on.
Right now I'm literally lightening my load by systematically purging my possessions so that if I find it either expedient or necessary to move elsewhere I have less shit to haul with me. As I said, we've already discussed selling things off if necessary. I am still looking for work. IF I had sufficient employment right now I'd be laying in a stock of staple foods and goods for just in case, but frankly, I haven't the funds for it right now.
Maybe you don't believe it's that bad, but my weekly food bill (which the Other Half does track for our budgeting) has DOUBLED in the last six months even though we eliminated a lot of "luxury" and processed foods, and stopped eating out more than twice a month - and "eating out" is now a trip to Burger King, not a nice restaurant. In over 25 years I was never unemployed longer than a week - now it's going on 5 months. I have one sister living on a minium wage job and food stamps. The other one's family is afloat only because she's a doctor... but they're up to their eyebrows in debt even if their house IS paid off between her medical education loans and two children trying to get through college (which is now iffy purely on financial terms - both the kids are A students). My parents did some smart investing, but one is disabled (with medical bills increasing) and the other retired so their income is NOT going up. Sure, they'll let me and the Other Half stay in their spare bedroom and keep a
few possessions, but there isn't space for most of what I own.
If I do not get a job, in May my current income stops and by the end of September, October at the latest, my resources will be exhausted and I
will be homeless - that's the ticking clock I'm looking at. What's worse is that, given I have no job, we are actually in much
better circumstances than most unemployed Americans in that we don't have debt. Yet.
It's a sad fucking state to be in when you're hoping your spouse is approved for Federal disability so you'll have SOME sort of income.... but currently it's averaging 512 days for first round approval/disapproval, of which we've not yet covered even 180, and most are disapproved the first time around. Even if we get it, it won't be in time to keep us from being out on the street.
This story is being played out over and over across the US.
Some of these trends need to reverse or we will not be in a recession, we'll be in another Great Depression.
