www.newsweek.com/…
So, the trucking industry is collapsing (see Newsweek article above). Is this one of those canaries in a coal mine??
In a country run by sane, competent, educated people, we would be helping truckers transition into other industries, and/or moving them into short-haul driving. This is yet another sign that we need to massively shift our consumption to local/in-state products/businesses, or at least within your region. If most of our consumption is within our community, state or region, there is less need for long-haul trucking; it's also safer for everyone on the road, including the truckers, who are often asked to drive on short turn-arounds with little sleep. It will never happen with the trump regime, but we should also see a massive effort to build more rail capacity to move goods - and people - around. We should have been doing more rail years ago, and shifted the truckers into rail jobs. As for the consumption shift part, if you can afford cable tv, you can afford to go local, if you can afford Amazon, you can afford to go local.
If we don't make this sacrifice now, there will be nothing to sacrifice later!
The one thing we all have to do is feed ourselves. We don’t need to entertain ourselves, at least not electronically anyway. The cable conglomerate oligarchs are counting on americans to continue to be addicted to the slow death of short-attention span theater. Will you show them otherwise, at least long enough to bring them down & build an economy that works for everyone??
Americans should be doing what Canadians have been doing for months, looking at labels to make sure you're getting either a local/in-state product, or as close to home as you can. BTW, shifting consumption has the even more important benefit of boosting our tax bases, so states, especially blue states since trump has declared war on us, can pay for their own things. 68 cents of each $ you spend with a local/in-state business stays in the community/state, vs. 40-42 cents of each $ spent with a corporate chain/Amazon. We sealed our doom when we gave our lives over to corporations, but we can take it back. We don't have to bankroll our own destruction, and giving your money to corporations is just that. When I was growing up in the 70s/early 80s, my small town was dominated by locally-owned dept stores, toy stores, men's and women's clothing stores, auto parts stores, etc. - and we actually had a larger tax base relative to the cost/standard of living; we were a pipsqueak economically compared to today, but we actually did better all around because more of our money was staying in the community/state.
