Trucker Pay Has Fallen When Adjusted For Inflation

Brett, I hear a lot of jealousy here over other people's success. You are trying to dictate what you think is Fair and telling other people what they should be allowed to make.

Just remember that life is a game, when you die all your possessions go back into the box, just like Monopoly. Getting angry about these things is hurting no one but yourself.

The rich are not stealing their wealth, their employees are not forced to work for them at those wages. Everyone in this country gets to do what is in their best interest.

Unions are what make poor people content where they are at so they do not desire pursuing to better themselves. Government is even worst and makes folks slothful. Ever hear someone say that they have no need to get a job because they still have six months of unemployment left?

I have never belonged to a union or received government assistance, I worked over five years delivering pizza and was able to pay off my entire house in that time here outside of Dallas Tx, I admit the house only cost 95k, but still it is a decent place for me and my wife. Built `in 97, 3 bedrooms, 2 bathrooms, great neighborhood and all that.

Poor working people are a lot more responsible for their own conditions than you are giving them credit for.

What he is giving you is a history lesson. The warning signs are all the same and we are in danger of repeating it.

Unions are what make poor people content where they are at so they do not desire pursuing to better themselves

Can you give an example of how they do that? I'm not really sure where you're coming from on that.

You also don't seem to understand that you can't just let everyone fend for themselves. A completely free market without a strong and fair central authority will lead to dictatorships, empires, and all sorts of abuse and neglect because there are some purely awful people out there. Again, this is not my opinion. These are facts with thousands of years of historical precedence. You have to face that fact and prepare to do something about it. It's naive to think everyone can govern themselves. People as individuals can be any extreme. Society as a whole has to find ways to temper that and keep things balanced. Obviously that's the Governments main intended purpose. Unions are another way of balancing the power.

The rich are not stealing their wealth, their employees are not forced to work for them at those wages. Everyone in this country gets to do what is in their best interest.

Thank God you weren't making decisions for the world in the early 40's. I guess you would have said, "Oh just leave Hitler alone. He's not stealing power. The people have given it to him. Everyone has the right to have all the power they'd like to have. People don't have to be Germans and the Jews can move somewhere else if they want. Let people do what's in their best interest."

Obviously there are people that will take things to extremes and they have to be dealt with for the good of society. Unfettered selfishness does not lead to a strong and healthy society.

I am very tired of black and white childish thinking from both sides of this. We gotta take the best from both schools of thought and flush the rest down the dust bins of history.

Helping our fellow man is great, working hard to build a life is great. Lets make both happen, just not to extremes.

There is a time and place for black and white thinking, and that's not being childish. One can recognize grays and yet still hold to absolute truths.

Not all communal living is extreme, nor the product of a cult.

Desperate times calls for desperate measures - darn it, there goes that black and white thinking again ...

Brett, your comment about a free market gave me a little more insight into your worldview. Glad to hear you're not a total advocate of a mob or herd mentality.

Some of my posts are me playing the devil's advocate.

Looks like everyone here needs to read some Ayn Rand.

We are headed for an economic disaster no matter what way you slice it. Our system has been in decay since the 1970s. The government has played a huge role in how things have become the way they are now. Corporate America now basically is in control of the government. The people at the top have absolutely zero idea of how the people in the middle are living. Just listen to the drivel that emanates from the mouths of people like Nancy Pelosi, Barack Obama, the Clintons, the Bush family, or any of the other so out of touch with reality politicians that have somehow managed to get voted into office. It is our own government that creates this downfall with it's massive social programs, to big to fail policies, and it's capitalize on the gains and socialize the losses attitude.

A huge portion of our problems started with LBJ in the mid 1960s and his creation of the welfare system that has become a way of life for the lower classes. All this system does is enable those that don't want to perform to live off the backs of those that do. On my grandparents farm there was a general rule when it came to living and working there. You don't work you don't eat. We need to scrap these social programs that enable the lazy to live freely off your dime.

I watched two great American cities become ghost towns namely Dayton and Springfield Ohio. Technology had a huge role to play in the demise of these two cities. But so did corporate greed and government collusion. I had a friend named Bill whose father worked as a machinist at NCR (National Cash Register) in Dayton from the early 1960s right up until 1980. They went home for Christmas shut down one year and when he came back two weeks later they had retooled the factory and no longer were going to manufacture a mechanical register in favor of the new cheaper and more reliable digital electronic models. Of course for my friend's father this fell short by two years of him being able to draw his pension. The union did nothing to help. General Motors AC Delco division and Harrison division... They also had huge labor forces employing thousands with good paying union scale jobs. Well thanks to our politicians coming up with Mexican trade agreements in the late 1970s they just suddenly up and moved their factories and warehouses south of the border to take advantage of cheap labor, not having to pay massive pensions and other benefits as imposed by labor unions. What did this accomplish? Massive cost savings for GM. Huge bonuses to execs and kickbacks to politicians. All the while placing literally thousands if high school level educated older workers on the welfare roles. Created massive urban blight and the shuttering of one of our greatest resources manly the factories that produced the products we bought and sold on the domestic and international markets. I wasn't there back then but in the 1950s (as an old timer in a diner where I used to eat lunch told me) that in Springfield if you were an able bodied person walking down the street there were recruiters standing on the sidewalks asking if you needed a job. These were for companies like Colliers Publishing, Springfield Metallic Casket, International Harvester, and the James Leffel Company. All of these companies were running three shifts and employing thousands of American workers. A huge portion of these companies failed in the mid to late 70s due to what? If you guessed greedy labor unions forcing high wages and unsustainable benefits onto the backs of the very companies that employed all of these folks you would be 100% correct. Follow that up with the creation of OSHA and the EPA along with other forms of government regulation and looting and there you have what has brought our nation to it's knees.

I also learned something when I moved out of the USA. I was sitting in a roadside cafe in 1993 in Negril watching a work crew digging up an old culvert for replacement. I remember asking my friend who was also a native why have ten men working for three days to manually change the culvert when they could do it in a couple hours with a backhoe? (They had one at the maintenance facility) His reply was " Well then what would all these men do for work? If you do the job with a machine then these guys will be out of a job."

Growing up watching the once greatest nation on Earth fail has not been fun. Every time a new trade agreement, regulation, or technological advancement happens it is the American middle class that takes the hit. Our entire socioeconomic system is like an piece of antiquated software. Instead of editing the core code we add a patch because it is easier. With each patch it becomes more difficult to edit the core. With each patch it becomes more bloated, convoluted, and inefficient. But in spite of our selves we just keep adding to our demise. So who are we to blame? Industry and enterprise, government, labor, or the root of it all, ourselves. At this point in time we are headed for a brick wall at 1000 MPH. Will we hit it? If past experience has anything to dictate that would be an unqualified yes.

So Brett... To answer your questions:

1. No, it definitely is not fair.

2. Not a damn thing. Until enough of us have had enough and decide WE as a whole need to make the changes to reset the system we will continue on our path straight into H*ll.

I have read through all the post here, great comments by most everyone. Common theme is we have to unite, despite ideological diiferences, to make change. We are not poor enough yet to do this.

In college during the early 90's, the only proffessor I had great respect for told me this, "the 20th Centery was a war of ideals, the 21st Century will be a war between the haves and have nots." Looks like he was wiser than I thought.

Thank God you weren't making decisions for the world in the early 40's. I guess you would have said, "Oh just leave Hitler alone. He's not stealing power. The people have given it to him. Everyone has the right to have all the power they'd like to have. People don't have to be Germans and the Jews can move somewhere else if they want. Let people do what's in their best interest."

Obviously there are people that will take things to extremes and they have to be dealt with for the good of society. Unfettered selfishness does not lead to a strong and healthy society.

Do not be so quick to thank God just yet.I was not alive in the 40s but here I am now. I want freedom and there will always be people like me. Have you ever heard of the invisible hand? If an entrepreneur is allowed to pursue prosperity then everyone else will benefit with him. People that rely on the government and unions that take their money in order to make things "fair" for them will always be limited in their lives.

Hitler killed millions of Jewish people and they are facing even worst persecution today if Iran or any number of the Muslim countries had there way. But I am not one of those folks. Israel deserves freedom to prosper as much as the United States.

People that rely on the government and unions that take their money in order to make things "fair" for them will always be limited in their lives.

I get what you're saying here...ideally people should work for their food and fend for themselves. I get that. But a lot of people won't have that option if other people are putting their welfare in jeopardy. For instance, 90% or more of the population will be working for someone else and that someone else will have knowledge about that business that most employees won't have.

For instance, the chemists at a chemical plant are going to know the inherent dangers far better than anyone else. Naturally the ownership and upper management of the plant will have access to that knowledge. But what about the everyday workers? They're not privy to that information unless upper management wants them to be. So a few sociopaths can hide critical life and death information for decades, slowly killing thousands of people but raking in the profits for themselves and the corporation. Ever hear of asbestos, maybe?

Those are the type of people that will rape and pillage the workers to make an extra buck. They'll literally send you to your grave rather than cut into their profits even a tiny bit. History is full of these people. Corporations all over the world are full of these people today. That's the nature of people and money....maniacal sociopaths are going to be attracted to centers of power and money. Inevitably some of them will successfully take the reigns in Government or large corporations and be in control of millions of people. Someone has to watch out for those types and deal with them when they get control and abuse it.

For instance, what if one man, already a billionaire, decided he should make $570 million dollars this year while 30,000 of his workers should only make $25,000. Do you realize that company could still pay that man his $570 million, pay each of those workers a million dollars a year, and still produce $20 billion in cash flow for the corporation??? But nope, he'd rather keep every last bit for himself and the corporation and let his workers all live in poverty. Now wouldn't it be nice if a union rep could tap that man on the shoulder and say, "Friend, I don't blame you for trying, but your pay structure is simply not going to happen. Let's help you come up with something a little more reasonable because I'm afraid you're a sociopath and you'll destroy our society if we let you."

Indeed that's the story today at Apple.....one man making $570 million at a corporation producing $50 billion a year in cash flow paying 30,000 people $25,000 a year. Is that really the banner you want to wave in the name of capitalism? Is our economy really going to hold up over the long run if we let that kind of stuff continue to happen? Does it make sense for our society to sit back and watch that happen? Because it doesn't make sense to me.

Just as an example of how big the gap is in worker to CEO the CEO of Mcdonalds makes 450 times what the average mcdonalds employee makes.

I'm not saying a burger flipper should make 20 bucks an hour, but its got to the point that someone who works a 40+ hour work week cannot feed themselves much less a family.

In the 70s and 80s a min wage income could feed a family of 4. Now you are better off on welfare then working, that is one of the biggest problems.