MORNING RANT - The War on Labor Expense: There Never Was a Truck Driver Shortage

Those who seek to flood this country with inexpensive, non-citizen labor like to claim that this is necessary due to a shortage of Americans that can or will do the job here in the United States. This has certainly been the case regarding truck drivers.

But there never actually was a truck driver shortage. There has been a shortage of professional truck drivers who will work for the compensation of unskilled labor. Bringing in foreign indentured servants as truck drivers was an awful way to avoid paying market wages for skilled labor.

It somehow became an accepted fact in the business community that one of the industries suffering from a labor shortage was truck driving. This was puzzling, because driving a truck has always been a great opportunity for Americans to earn a middle-class wage and provide for their families, without needing to pursue the college route or go to a highly technical trade school. But that is not to minimize the professional skill and training necessary to be an over-the-road truck driver. It requires its own schooling, technical skills, and a professional demeanor to handle the various challenges of a job that is often very stressful. It is the farthest thing from an entry-level job or a position that requires unskilled labor.

Unfortunately, there is a growing intolerance of any labor expense in some business circles, which makes cheap foreign labor look attractive. In one of those bizarre, horseshoe-shaped political alliances, the American left is in alignment with those who seek to eliminate career-wage, blue-collar jobs in this country. For the left, it’s due to their animus toward heritage Americans, especially those of the “deplorable” working class.

In recent years, while some of us were barely paying attention, our highways suddenly became overrun with untrained, non-English-speaking foreigners who were effectively the property of the Asian “body shops” and the European crime gangs that were trafficking them into the U.S.

Fortunately, the Trump administration is cleaning up this mess and targeting non-qualified and non-domiciled CDLs (commercial drivers licenses), as well as the companies that employ and control them. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy is doing great work.

Paying the market wage for skilled labor among a nation’s citizens is not antithetical to capitalism. Just the opposite. It is a fundamental input into the pricing of goods in a free market. Adam Smith, the “Father of Capitalism” was unambiguous in his contempt for the evil institution of slavery as a means to avoid paying for labor. He also understood the futility of expecting the same labor quality from human chattel compared to the quality of work from free people who willingly trade their labor for compensation in a competitive labor market. The chaos and carnage on our nation’s highways from foreign truck drivers has borne this out.

Rather than a shortage of American truck drivers, there will be an abundance of them once the invisible hand of the free market is no longer distorted by the injection of unqualified, foreign labor trafficked into the cabs of America’s big rigs.

Jeffrey Carter Has My Endorsement for Nevada Treasurer

A reminder to readers/voters in Nevada, a friend of the blog, Jeffrey Carter, is running for state Treasurer in the Republican primary. He has my endorsement and he deserves your vote. Early voting starts on May 23 for the June 9 primary.

There are a great many reasons to vote for Jeff, including his financial acumen. But the thing to know is that he is one of us, an out and proud, Trump-supporting conservative who was reading Ace of Spades long before he thought about running for office. He cut his teeth in the Chicago Commodities Exchange, and then ventured into the world of venture capital, never apologizing for or hiding his conservatism nor his support for Donald Trump. (Carter writes the widely linked political site “Points & Figures.”)

While I would endorse Jeffrey Carter, who is a friend of mine, irrespective of the quality of his opponent, Jeff is the clear choice in this race. His opponent, Drew Johnson, is a serial candidate who has name recognition from the races he has lost. The Carter campaign has a link discussing various ethical imbroglios involving Mr. Johnson, but all I need to know is that Drew Johnson is a fringe libertarian who admires Thomas Massie. When Mr. Johnson ran for Congress (a race he lost) he promised to provide Massie a 2nd Republican vote when Massie is working to undermine President Trump.

This is from the Nevada Independent, after Drew Johnson unexpectedly won the 2024 GOP nomination for a Nevada congressional seat:

True to libertarian form, [Drew Johnson] said the current members of Congress who impress him the most are Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY) and Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY), two libertarians who frequently find themselves as the lone "no" vote on bills that every other member supports,

That skepticism of his own party has frequently extended to Trump. In posts from his now locked personal account on X, Johnson called Trump a "socialist" during the 2016 race, called his presidency an "embarrassment" in 2020 over a federal execution during the lame-duck period and said Joe Biden's 2020 victory was "an endorsement of humanity, restraint & kindness."

For Nevadans, Jeffrey Carter is the best candidate to be Nevada’s next Treasurer.

[buck.throckmorton at protonmail dot com]

posted by Buck Throckmorton at 11:00 AM

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