The Goat Pen

Maybe it was just you that was coming...

Spell check

I got this. I once saw a shooting star back in ‘02. It’s probably a white hole. Neil DeGrasse Tyson taught me about them. If it was aliens they would have already colonized us and IB would be the Governor of this insect run shithole.

With a prolonged labor shortage, is this going to be the new normal?

https://www.nationalreview.com/2021/10/ ... n/#slide-1

As part of the push to get our logistics unstuck, the president is prodding the Port of Los Angeles, one of the most important in the country, to operate on a 24/7 basis. This is welcome news, although it might cause most people to stop and think, “Wait a minute — our ports don’t already operate 24 hours a day?”

No, which speaks to the thick layer of irrationality encrusting our supply chain.

It is experiencing its worst disruption since the advent of the shipping-container era in the late 1950s, driven, at bottom, by the pandemic. A surge in e-commerce, coupled with a labor shortage, helped to create a spiraling series of bottlenecks.

Ships are idling, waiting to unload their cargo at ports, while containers are waiting at the ports to be shipped further inland, while cargo is waiting outside full warehouses on chassis that aren’t available to use to pick up other containers, and so on.....

....long-haul truckers around the country need about 20,000 more drivers and have also been hit by a shortage of chassis. In the midst of a major logistical nightmare, the U.S. International Trade Commission imposed roughly 200 percent duties (on top of Trump-era duties of 25 percent) on the world’s biggest manufacturer of chassis, China Intermodal Marine Containers. The head of the Harbor Trucking Association, representing port truckers on the West Coast, complained, “Now we’ve created scarcity and increased the cost.”

Most of the shit sits in the ocean, on containerships, because there are not enough longshoremen to empty them. And the ones that are moved off the ships, all this shit sits at the port because no one is around to move it to the warehouse. We are down 20,000 long haul drivers. And no one wants to do that job anymore because young people are paranoid that their driving job will be replaced with automation. I don't blame them.

And even if you CAN find a driver to get it from long beach to the distribution center, BFD. There are not enough warehousemen to receive the goods sitting in the containers outside the warehouses. And there is not enough space in the warehouses to receive the goods sitting in the containers at the warehouses because there are not enough warehousemen to "pick" the existing goods in the warehouse to ship it to the retailers.

For fuck's sake, do we really need to import ANY of this shit? This isn't toilet paper, fresh eggs, raw beef, soap, corn, veggies, and milk. We import no oil from Asia. This shit is all just Apple products, televisions, apparel, kids toys, adult sex-toys, laptops, pre-processed foods, and other stuff that we like, want, but really don't need. Is anyone in this country going to die if there are no t-shirts on the racks in Wal-Mart? Fuck all this imported Amazon shit.

There ain't no fucking truck driver shortage. If I had a gun I'd be in jail right now. Motherfuckers. Stay in the right lane Bitch!

Any shit imported to America and built by an American company overseas can fucking sink as far as I'm concerned.

Jungle Rat wrote: ↑Fri Oct 15, 2021 4:52 pm There ain't no fucking truck driver shortage. If I had a gun I'd be in jail right now. Motherfuckers. Stay in the right lane Bitch!

Well, maybe we are and maybe we are not. But it appears we are also short 490,000 warehousemen.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/markets ... d=msedgntp

Even if we had the truckers, we don't have nearly enough pickers, forklift drivers, loaders, or receivers.

And the Port of Savannah was not backed up at all.

Jungle Rat wrote: ↑Fri Oct 15, 2021 4:55 pm Any shit imported to America and built by an American company overseas can fucking sink as far as I'm concerned.

I would exalt this comment if I could. I can't so let me just say that on this one thing rat, we are allies.

Fuck you

Jungle Rat wrote: ↑Fri Oct 15, 2021 5:02 pmFuck you

Fair enough

Who is John Galt?

Jungle Rat wrote: ↑Fri Oct 15, 2021 4:56 pm And the Port of Savannah was not backed up at all.

76 ships, 500,000 containers. 10 days to unload from the moment they arrive.



You are right. They should just go through the Panama Canal and unload in Savanah instead

innocentbystander wrote: ↑Fri Oct 15, 2021 6:28 pm

Jungle Rat wrote: ↑Fri Oct 15, 2021 4:56 pm And the Port of Savannah was not backed up at all.

76 ships, 500,000 containers. 10 days to unload from the moment they arrive.



You are right. They should just go through the Panama Canal and unload in Savanah instead

You mean that they should use the Panama Canal for its intended purpose? Wow. You are a fucking genius.

DooKSucks wrote: ↑Fri Oct 15, 2021 6:53 pm

innocentbystander wrote: ↑Fri Oct 15, 2021 6:28 pm

Jungle Rat wrote: ↑Fri Oct 15, 2021 4:56 pm And the Port of Savannah was not backed up at all.

76 ships, 500,000 containers. 10 days to unload from the moment they arrive.



You are right. They should just go through the Panama Canal and unload in Savanah instead

You mean that they should use the Panama Canal for its intended purpose? Wow. You are a fucking genius.

Don't be a dick. This was productive conversation before you had to be an asshole.

Perhaps your hero in the White House should sign an executive order sending those ships through the canal to Savanah? LOL!!!!! Or maybe, they are too big for the canal? Its a long way to sail to go all the way down to Argentina and back up again.

Look, I don't think we need ANY of this shit. I don't think we need it. Sure prices are skyrocketing. But they wouldn't sky rocket if we didn't think we needed it. I am not going to Wal-Mart to by any apparel. I am not buying any televisions or laptops. All the stuff we need to live, we pretty much make all of that here. Those 76 container ships at Long Beach (18 new ships arriving every day) the stuff they carry from China is just gravy on the potatoes. So a crisis? Meh.

Is America experiencing an unofficial general strike?

Across the country, people are refusing to return to backbreaking or mind-numbing low-wage jobs

Last Friday’s jobs report from the US Department of Labor elicited a barrage of gloomy headlines. The New York Times emphasized “weak” jobs growth and fretted that “hiring challenges that have bedeviled employers all year won’t be quickly resolved,” and “rising wages could add to concerns about inflation.” For CNN, it was “another disappointment”. For Bloomberg the “September jobs report misses big for a second straight month”.

The media failed to report the big story, which is actually a very good one: American workers are now flexing their muscles for the first time in decades.

You might say workers have declared a national general strike until they get better pay and improved working conditions.

No one calls it a general strike. But in its own disorganized way it’s related to the organized strikes breaking out across the land – Hollywood TV and film crews, John Deere workers, Alabama coal miners, Nabisco workers, Kellogg workers, nurses in California, healthcare workers in Buffalo.

Disorganized or organized, American workers now have bargaining leverage to do better. After a year and a half of the pandemic, consumers have pent-up demand for all sorts of goods and services.

But employers are finding it hard to fill positions.

Last Friday’s jobs report showed the number of job openings at a record high. The share of people working or actively looking for work (the labor force participation rate) has dropped to 61.6%. Participation for people in their prime working years, defined as 25 to 54 years old, is also down.

Over the past year, job openings have increased 62%. Yet overall hiring has actually declined.

What gives?

Another clue: Americans are also quitting their jobs at the highest rate on record. The Department of Labor reported on Tuesday that some 4.3 million people quit their jobs in August. That comes to about 2.9% of the workforce – up from the previous record set in April, of about 4 million people quitting.

All told, about 4 million American workers have been leaving their jobs every month since the spring.

These numbers have nothing to do with the Republican bogeyman of extra unemployment benefits supposedly discouraging people from working. Reminder: the extra benefits ran out on Labor Day.

Renewed fears of the Delta variant of Covid may play some role. But it can’t be the largest factor. With most adults now vaccinated, rates of hospitalizations and deaths are way down.

My take: workers are reluctant to return to or remain in their old jobs mostly because they’re burned out.

Some have retired early. Others have found ways to make ends meet other than remain in jobs they abhor. Many just don’t want to return to backbreaking or mind-numbing low-wage shit jobs.

The media and most economists measure the economy’s success by the number of jobs it creates, while ignoring the quality of those jobs. That’s a huge oversight.

Years ago, when I was secretary of labor, I kept meeting working people all over the country who had full-time work but complained that their jobs paid too little and had few benefits, or were unsafe, or required lengthy or unpredictable hours. Many said their employers treated them badly, harassed them, and did not respect them.

Since then, these complaints have only grown louder, according to polls. For many, the pandemic was the last straw. Workers are fed up, wiped out, done-in, and run down. In the wake of so much hardship, illness and death during the past year, they’re not going to take it anymore.

In order to lure workers back, employers are raising wages and offering other inducements. Average earnings rose 19 cents an hour in September and are up more than $1 an hour – or 4.6% – over the last year.

Clearly, that’s not enough.

Corporate America wants to frame this as a “labor shortage.” Wrong. What’s really going on is more accurately described as a living-wage shortage, a hazard pay shortage, a childcare shortage, a paid sick leave shortage, and a healthcare shortage.

Unless these shortages are rectified, many Americans won’t return to work anytime soon. I say it’s about time.

Yes that is correct hedge. I pretty much agree with all of that.

But corporate America (that does no real "work") they will just run to DC and lobby our congress-critters (both dems and GOP) and beg for more migrant labor exceptions to be made into bills and passed into law. That will be their way to fix the problem (as opposed to raising the wage high enough to get the people away from the damn screens.)

I also think that AirBnB, Turo, Lyft, Uber, Door-Dash, Uber Eats, all that gigging shit, people are really starting to make legitimate money with those income streams. So they are like, why the fuck should I work? My BUSINESS is my work. That kind of thing.

“Years ago, when I was secretary of labor, I kept meeting working people all over the country who had full-time work but complained that their jobs paid too little and had few benefits, or were unsafe, or required lengthy or unpredictable hours. Many said their employers treated them badly, harassed them, and did not respect them.”

Welcome to the GOP’s vision of America.

Actually, you could've left out "the GOP's version of" in that last sentence...

Yes but that’s what makes the GOP so great. They’re no longer fiscal conservatives who oppose the libs. They want to run off in the opposite direction as far as possible. From reactionary to radical in the span of a few decades.