The supply chain problem and inflation are corporate, read private sector failures. The government is coming to the rescue with corporate socialism.
Socialism for corporations
After listening to President Joe Biden and Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, many will justifiably give the Biden administration kudos for thoroughly engaging. The president and relevant administrations secretaries gave an upbeat press conference about all the things the government will do and is doing to mitigate the supply chain problem and the trucker shortage.
After listening to the litany of steps the administration was taking, the only thing I heard that the government was responsible for was permitting efficiency. In other words, making sure the CDL (commercial driver’s licenses) and the licensing of training programs were done promptly. And those are state government responsibilities. This is corporate socialism by a different name.
The president is fond of saying he is a capitalist. He still fails to realize that the instability of our economy is a direct result of the correct functioning of said system. These cycles where the system screw over people, and afterward, everyone asks the government to fix it is insanity. During every economic boom/bust cycle, the corporatocracy transfers the wealth of the American people to themselves. A resulting crash occurs. They keep the spoils. And the government then bails the system out for a reset.
The president did a great job of explaining the supply chain problem. The first thing of importance pointed out is a sad reality.
“I have nothing against investment bankers,” the president said. “They could all retire. Nothing much would change. You quit; everything comes to a halt. Think about it.”
In other words, the president realizes that the economic system he reveres pays a ton of money to corporatists who get huge paychecks not commensurate with their value. As I have written about before, these are the guys solely responsible for the supply chain failure and trucker shortage as they chose greed and profit over economic stability.
“During the pandemic, a lot of Americans have been introduced to a term you all know well,” the president said. “Supply chains. A simple term supply chain is a journey, the journey of a product to get to a customer’s doorstep. … And during the pandemic, those changes were interrupted. Factory closures around the world, not just the United States, around the world, caused backups and delays because of COVID. At the same time, because of the strength and speed of our recovery, Americans had more money in their pockets than they had in a long time. During the pandemic, they wanted to spend that money not on restaurants or vacations, which are now coming back as well, but on hard goods.They wanted a home, improvements, televisions, automobiles, things that had to be transported the very products is slowed down by disruption of the supply chain. Demand was high, supply was interrupted, and the recipe for higher prices and long delays. That’s exactly what we saw, not only here, but all around the world. So we knew we needed every tool at our disposal to address the problem.”
While the president is correct, he did not point out the irresponsibility of the corporate sector for their shortsightedness with offshoring, just-in-time inventory, and abusive pricing.
The president pointed out that in today’s dollars, truckers’ pay declined substantially over the last several decades, from $34+ to $25. In other words to increase profits corporations ultimately paid hard-working truckers less even as they raised prices. And they wonder why there is a trucker shortage? And why should the government help fund their training?
Maybe it’s time for the government to behave like an investor and reap the rewards of the dollars we-the-people invest to make greedy corporations even more income. But then the socialism the corporations love for themselves would no longer be as profitable.