Trucker Pay Has Fallen When Adjusted For Inflation

Here's another point that seems to have been bypassed: once upon a time, and not all that long ago either, corporations didn't just amass huge piles of liquid wealth and sit on it. Profits were re-invested back into the company, or shared out among the workers in the form of profit-sharing or annual bonuses, often to the tune of thousands of dollars per employee. Somewhere along about the mid to late 70s, however, somebody got the bright idea that, hey, why should we give our money to the little people when we can just keep it for ourselves? And just like that, profit sharing and bonuses began to go the way of the dinosaur. Now, the only way you're going to get in on any of that is either A) work for a small family-run business or for yourself, or B) somehow find yourself among the top-level executives of a major Fortune 500 company.

There was a time in this country when corporations recognized the fact that without their workforce, not only would they have no product to sell, but also no customers to sell their product to, and they compensated their workers accordingly. This was also the time when our economy was at its strongest and most sustainable. This is not a coincidence or an accident.

Fatsquatch.....I couldn't have said it better myself. You nailed it.

Steve will give you my 2 cents.

1. All people have greed, it's part of the human condition.

2. Most people are good. I know many business owners and a couple of powerful CEO's. All great people. There is a big difference in their managing styles though, a private vs publicly owned company. Privately owned tends to favor self interest and those intetest usually favors people you know. Publicly owned business serves a mob that you do not know. I have worked for both types and have had good/bad ones in both.

3. This will work out by nature. If I am living very well, family taken care of but my neighbors kids are starving, it is only s matter of time before I'm robbed. I can hire security but eventually that will even get to be to expensive.

4. Small business is getting destroyed by both corporations and government. I live in a small town and we are known for our mom and pop shops. Wal-mart tried to move in and the town/county denied the building permits. Our choice, we don't want to lose our mom and pops.

5. I don't understand this question.

Attila; Q 5 is somewhat rhetorical. I.e. many people bemoan the profits of large corporations and the desire of those same corporations to feed the stockholders' share values. However, many of us are now stockholders (via our 401k's and IRA's) and we want our retirement funds maximized. Another case in point; we want to walk into the store and buy laptops for under $500, LED TV's for under $1,000 but we think all workers should be paid high wages. Unfortunately we often forget those high wages will mean higher prices.

OK, makes sense to me now. I have a 401K also, don't support it much though. Kind of sketchy gambling part of my retirement on a casino. I watched the Savings and Loan industry collapse as a teen in 1989. Bush/Dem's stepped in and bailed it out. I think that is the biggest reason our government is so cozy with Wall Street. Not because they are BFF's but the political class is scared to death of a mutual fund collapse. It would be good game for anyone over 55 and most companies that have been around for 30 years would be in serious trouble. 2008 TARP bailout was the same thing, just bigger. Big reason I will be looking for a company to partner with that is no more than 10 years old. It most likely won't be heavily tied up with mutual fund, pension and 401K obligations. Not sure if there is the political will for another bailout or even if it will be needed. Looking at history as a guide though, this rollercoaster we are on right now won't end for another 10 years.

Sorry Jopa do not agree with your premise that all unions will eventually gravitate to a Communist system. The decline of Union power was not the result of American work ethics. Young Americans during the 80's did not want to participate in a system their parents built. That system was not rewarding the kids as fast as they wanted. Dismantling union power by law was a sure fire way to bypass that system.

Unions act somewhat like a circuit breaker in the employment sector here in the USA. Not as a gate way drug to Communism.

who determines what is fair and by what criteria?

That's one of the classic questions that comes up when anyone suggests limiting the income of the upper echelon and giving more of it to the workers. And the answer to that is an easy one....you let the worker's union and the company negotiate it. That's the #1 reason I favor unions over Government intervention of any sort. Because the workers know their job, they know their work environment, and they know what it takes to get the job done. They also know their cost of living. So the workers themselves have the best perspective on what's fair to them and what isn't. They know safety should always be a top priority. They know if they're working hard at a job that's difficult and inherently dangerous they should be able to make a living wage doing it with some decent benefits to boot. And they know that with inflation comes higher wages. There is no dollar amount you can set across the board for any type of worker. It really needs to be done on a company-by-company basis. Let the negotiations happen between the company itself and their own workers.

You'll never see the solidarity among people that existed back then because individual interests have made our American worker much more diverse and much less cohesive.

I don't think you see that type of solidarity because there hasn't been anything that has brought us together as a society the way The Great Depression, the Dust Bowl, and two world wars did. Hardship brings people together and this country faced tremendous hardship during those times. And it wasn't a few tough years here and there. There was enough hardship over a long enough period of time that it shaped the outlook, work ethic, and character of several generations of people.

But in the past 50 years we've had next to nothing in the way of hardship on a national scale. Pretty much anyone under the age of 50 can say they haven't experienced a global event that affected their everyday lives very much. Even 9/11 had nearly no affect on everyday life for most people. If you didn't turn on CNN you wouldn't have known it happened.

But the Great Depression brought generations of families under one roof. The wars, especially WWII, required that women went to the factories, men went overseas to fight, and everyone rationed goods ranging from food to industrial materials. There were few, if any, Government programs in the early half of the 20th century so when times got tough people turned to each other to survive, not the Government.

Nowadays many people feel entitled to a high standard of living as part of the American Dream. They don't understand the history of this country and what it took to get it to where it is today. They don't understand the hardship, the back-breaking work, and the endless struggles people faced. They don't know what it means to pull together when times get tough, they only know they should demand more freebies from the Government. Growing up the #1 phrase I heard from my parents was, "When the going gets tough, the tough get going." Nowadays it would be more like, "When the going gets tough people demand more handouts."

So you won't see the solidarity today because the conditions that recent generations have lived with are far easier than they were in past generations. You simply don't have the outlook and the character nowadays you had back then.

In the end unions are simply a way to keep a balance of power. You can't just let one small group of people take everything for themselves and leave tens of thousands of people in poverty. You need someone to balance that power. And you can't just say, "Go work somewhere else if you don't like it." I mean, think about it....is that what you hear when someone in your family does something you don't like? Do they tell you, "Just go find another family if you don't like it" or do you try to work things out amongst yourselves?

What about your neighborhood? If you lived in a great neighborhood but one family was ruining everything for their neighbors would you want to be told, "Then move if you don't like it" or would you rather find a way to work it out so that everyone can co-exist?

What about the school your children go to? If they had a great school but one horrible teacher was making in unbearable on everyone would you want to hear, "Well send your kids to another school if you don't like it" or would you like everyone to sit down and work it out together?

People really over-think the whole union thing. It's just a matter of common sense. You don't let a tyrant ruin everything for everyone, not in your family, not in your neighborhood, not in your schools, and not at your workplace. You get everyone together and work it out the best you can. Anytime you have a large group of people existing in any sort of system there has to be compromise and there has to be a balance of power. And you certainly can not just tell everyone to go take a hike if they don't like the conditions. When a corporation is making billions of dollars a year in profit there's no reason the workers can't make a fair wage and have a work environment focused on safety. Simple as that.

How much farther can this thread go? If you can do it better then start your own business and pay people that liveable wage. If yours is truly better, then you will succeed and the one who is doing it wrong will fail.

How are you going to fix anything with a union? A lot of those people are just plain evil, nothing better than a street gang. They will not let you have a job unless you surrender and pay them the "union dues". If you live in a free state with a right to work then they will beat you up for not joining them.

Sorry Jopa do not agree with your premise that all unions will eventually gravitate to a Communist system. The decline of Union power was not the result of American work ethics. Young Americans during the 80's did not want to participate in a system their parents built. That system was not rewarding the kids as fast as they wanted. Dismantling union power by law was a sure fire way to bypass that system.

Unions act somewhat like a circuit breaker in the employment sector here in the USA. Not as a gate way drug to Communism.

It's a strange thing how a person can make a statement and another read it and the two see two different things - quite different things . . . I said nothing of the sort that unions were a "gateway drug" to communism . . . what I stated was that the original ORGANIZERS of the labor movement in this country - the original founders of the various unions - had quite different motives than what they were selling to the American worker AT THAT TIME . . . the union movement of the late 1800's was directly connected to the newly developed philosophy of Socialism in Europe and the people who brought it to the U.S. had high hope of spreading the Communist philosophy here using unionism as a vehicle . . . the American worker was not interested in the "Internationale" of the communists but were, instead, nationalistic, loyal Americans who just wanted the promised decent working conditions and pay . . . this is all a matter of history . . . nothing to do with a "gateway drug to communism" . . .

Jopa

Well, this proves truckers are not simpletons.

I am not a fan of unions only because of my interactions with some members. ten years ago, I would be sitting in jail for assault. The ones I ran into were spineless wannabe thugs who need a reality check (upside the head). I'M SURE THERE ARE GOOD UNION FOLKS, I just haven't met them.

Government is good at one thing, protecting the citiens so we can persue our dreams.

As for greed, well, here is an idea. Find a need in any industry and create a solution to fill it. work your ass off to come up with the best product and do not stop until you have achieved success. Now, quit. take the money you earned and do whatever you want as long as you never come up with anymore solutions and never make another dime. Would you do that?

Short and sweet. Gotta go