In his folksy manner, Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg schooled Chuck Todd by putting supply chain discourse in the proper context.
Supply chain problem is a private sector fail
Many on the right would like to blame the supply chain failure on the Biden administration. They please willfully ignorance of how a capitalist economy functions.
Pete Buttigieg did not allow Chuck Todd to go unanswered as he implied that the Biden administration had dropped the ball with supply chain problems. Buttigieg told the unfortunate truth. The private sector dropped the ball.
Most need to know the term JIT from now on. It is used to describe today’s inventory method by many corporations. It stands for Just-In-Time inventory. Inventory just sitting on a shelf make no profits. But it is an insurance policy against supply chain disruptions.
Corporations, in their ultimate wisdom and greed, decided to rid themselves of a right-sized inventory. And they are paying the price now. Unfortunately, it’s a cost we will all bear because they have pricing power.
Buttigieg pointed out several essential tenets.
- Ports operations, trucking, and warehousing are all done by the private sector., Any failure in that system must be attributed to a private system that generally wants government out of their lives until they need it.
- The turnover rate for truckers is 90%. Evidently the private sector is not paying them what they are worth.
- The Biden administration is not waiting for the mythical market to respond. He will.
It is so important to repeat these truths over and over. One cannot allow the Right Wing machine to assign blame this administration.