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This gives me the sads. I grew up around truck drivers. Back in the 80s, it was considered a good, middle-class job. I knew plenty of families that were support
by jimt1234 5y ago
This gives me the sads. I grew up around truck drivers. Back in the 80s, it was considered a good, middle-class job. I knew plenty of families that were supported by truckers.
- burrows 5y agoIs “<insert-working-class-job> nostalgia” an everywhere thing, or limited to America?
- rfrey 5y agoIt's not nostalgia. It's an observation that the middle class is shrinking. There used to be lots of jobs that supported families that are now subsistence labour. "Well, you shoulda been a programmer" is not a satisfactory solution to the problem.
- burrows 5y ago> It's not nostalgia. It's an observation that the middle class is shrinking. Sounds like nostalgia of some sort, “Remember the good old days when we could all drive trucks then just come home and drink a Bud in front of the TeeVee.” Middle class, working class, lower class America is completely fucking brain dead, burn it to the fucking ground.
- knownjorbist 5y agoBehold, the shrinking American middle class: https://twitter.com/scottlincicome/status/1440064105444904961 https://twitter.com/scottlincicome/status/144006410544490496...
- tremon 5y agoDoesn't that graph non-critically equate cost of living increases with monetary inflation? I other words, it doesn't take into account the fact that many assets (such as housing) have increased in price much more than inflation would suggest, nor does it takes into account changes in basic necessities (one landline vs 3+ mobile internet subscriptions, one new POTS phone every 10 years vs 3+ new cell phones every other year).
- thehappypm 5y agoTrucking is an industry that while it does have good jobs for people, it is just a pure cost for literally everybody. Everybody except the truckers themselves would benefit from lower trucking cost.
- burrows 5y ago> Trucking is an industry that while it does have good jobs for people, it is just a pure cost for literally everybody. Everybody except the truckers themselves would benefit from lower trucking cost. Right, this is exactly the neoliberal argument for importing and outsourcing jobs.
- CyanBird 5y agoYeah, it is, but it is also true A single truck degrades roads thousand times more than a personal vehicle, yet they don't pay the equivalent on taxes because these costs need to be externalized in order to ensure that trucking remains redituable because of how fundamentally and structurally important it is for modern nations Generally the best offset is just to reduce the amount of truckers needed for last mile delivery and just use railways for most of the travel as trucking again, relies on a high degree of externalities, be them social, economic or environmental to remain revenue positive Again, trucking will forever exist, because it is important on a fundamental level, but ideally you would use railways as much as possible for logistics transport etc
- mensetmanusman 5y agoI also wonder about the road damage issue. I wonder if when truck drivers are controlling fleets of vehicles that follow along, whether the weight can be distributed much better like a train and would therefore not damage the road as much because the unit pressure intensity would be lower.
- adrianN 5y agoThis seems to be true for literally any job, or do you have a counter example?