Game Over

Donald Trump is arguably the most polarizing figure to ever occupy the oval office. I have confessed my sins and admitted voting for him. (I rationalize it by saying I voted against HRC, not for DJT). So far he’s done some good things: reducing regulations, appointing a conservative to the Supreme Court, opening a dialogue with North Korea, supporting our military and law enforcement. He’s done some not so good things: constantly tweeting and exhibiting language and behavior that is way beneath the office he is holding; picking fights with the media, starting a trade war, behaving erratically and inconsistently with his cabinet..basically just being the Donald Trump that we hoped he might leave at the curb when he moved into the White House.

But now he’s crossed a line from which he cannot recover. He’s taken crying children out of their parents’ arms. No matter that they came here illegally. No matter that these parents put their children at great risk during the journey to get here. No matter that we are following the letter of the law.

There are some things you just can’t do and we did it. Trump did it. And even though he scrambled around to “un-did it”, this one will leave a mark that won’t go away. Only the hardest of his hardcore base will stand by him at this point. Those in the big middle who voted just enough for him to win have abandoned him. Trump is finished and the Republican party is in critical condition. By inflicting what most are considering cruel and unnecessary hardship and trauma on children, Trump has committed the unpardonable sin. Game over.

“Never work with animals or children” – W.C. Fields

Ending It

The recent deaths of Kate Spade and Anthony Bourdain have us talking about suicide again. It’s not a new epidemic. I reckon it’s been around since the beginning when the first man realized that he was sentenced to a life of working the cursed soil that would only bring forth thistles and thorns. And women would have an even tougher life bearing children, having periods, then menopause and putting up with men. And that’s before they started shaving their legs and wearing high heels.

So people have always had good reasons to seek a way out of the pain and misery of this life. And when celebrities, who seem to have it all, opt for suicide; two questions come to mind. The obvious first question everyone ask is why, why did these people do this? The second question is out there but seldom asked: why more of us don’t punch our own tickets?

The truth is that a lot of us do punch that ticket. Around the world there are over 800,000 suicides each year (World Health Organization). And even though women have it tougher, they commit suicides at less than half the rate of men. That fact seems to hold true everywhere on earth except in Southeast Asia where the women are apparently as miserable as the men and just as inclined to put an end to it on their own. Southeast Asia and Europe (especially eastern Europe) have the highest suicide rates. The United States isn’t the most suicidal nation on earth, ranking 48th out of 183 nations but we’re moving up the charts.

So, back to the questions, why some do and why more people don’t? The underlying reasons are complicated and specific to each individual. But that said, depression seems to be the common denominator when it comes to suicide. Why most depressed people do NOT commit suicide is the real question. Depression may take a person to the threshold of suicide, but what makes them take that final, fatal step or, perhaps more importantly, keeps them from taking it?

For some people it’s religious belief. All of the world’s great religions oppose suicide. Some oppose it more than others. Even within religions some groups oppose it more than others, i.e. Catholics more so than Protestants. Buddhism seems to have a more tolerant view of suicide and perhaps that contributes to the higher suicide rate in Southeast Asia. And, in heavily Catholic Italy, the suicide rate is one of the lowest. So, what one believes about the eternal consequences of suicide is a factor.

Some people stop short of taking that final step because they know it will hurt others, those left behind. Some suicidal people have even credited pets with keeping them from going all the way.

But, the number one reason for not going through with it has to be fear. Fear is part of the religious barrier to suicide. What happens to my soul if I do this? And even for non-religious people there is the uncertainty of what lies beyond. But the hereafter can also be a motivator toward suicide. Whatever is out there is likely to be better, so let’s get on with it. Still fear is a deterrent. Fear of the pain. Fear of the experience of death. Even people who have faith and are not afraid of leaving this world usually have a fear of the process. How much does dying really hurt when you’re dying?

People take their own lives because it seems to be the best option at the moment. They are not happy in this life. Success that didn’t satisfy or failure that seems final. Hopes that are gone or a hopeless future. Lost loves or lost fortunes. The end of the beginning or the beginning of the end or just the end period, depending on your eternal perspective.

My own mother committed suicide late in life. Shot herself. She was depressed off and on and severely for most of her life. She attempted suicide when I was a child. Tried to hang herself, but somehow failed. At age 70, loaded up on anti-depressants and assorted drugs prescribed by different doctors; she sat down on her back porch, put a .38 to her chest, pulled the trigger and with a shot through the heart was gone. I can only guess that, in the final moment of decision, she could find no good reason not to.


Why should those who suffer ever be born?
Why should life be given to those whose spirits are bitter?
Why is life given to those who long for death that doesn’t come?
Why is it given to those who would rather search for death than for hidden treasure?
Why is life given to those who are actually happy and glad when they reach the grave?

The Book of Job 3: 20-22

Supply and Demand

I'm in the middle
The middle of life
I'm a boy and I'm a man
I'm eighteen and I like it.

Lyrics from the Alice Cooper song, “I’m Eighteen”


In the past I’ve commented on the truck driver shortage. I’ve even said that one possible solution would be to lower the age for interstate truck drivers from 21 to 18. But, I never said it was a good idea for the trucking industry. It may be a good idea for shippers and therefore for consumers (as long as the younger truck drivers don’t run over too many folks). But, I question why the trucking industry would want this.

There is now a bill being proposed in congress that would lower the age for interstate truck drivers to 18. There are restrictions designed to make it safer for these young newbies to drive trucks all over the country. On the surface it sounds like a good idea. We have a shortage of truck drivers, so increase the pool of available drivers and problem solved right? Well, that depends on the problem you’re trying to solve and the unintended consequences that are likely to accompany your solution.

When it comes to the truck driver shortage, it’s more of a supply problem than a demand problem. Yes the economy is growing and so is the population. So there is more freight. But, the population has grown enough that, all things equal (which they never are), we should have enough truck drivers. Especially given the way trailer sizes have increased over the last 40 years, the expansion of containerized intermodal transportation and the reduced size and improved packaging of freight.

But since the industry was deregulated in 1980, truck driver wages have declined dramatically. When adjusted for inflation, a driver today would need to earn over $100K per year to be on par with the drivers in 1980. Add in increased regulations and traffic congestion and the job is just not worth it anymore. Capable people who can pass a drug screen and are willing to work can find better things to do.

So over the past year we’ve seen driver wages and freight rates accelerate dramatically. They still have a long way to go, but they are trending in the right direction. And carriers are making more money which is not a bad thing if we want them to survive. But trucking companies are notorious for shooting themselves in the foot. Creating more capacity with an influx of 18-20 year old drivers may be doing just that. It will create some additional driving capacity in the short run, but with that additional capacity and the likelihood that the economy will slowdown in 2019 or 2020, we might well see freight rates drop and driver pay increases hit the skids.

We do need an entry point for 18, 19, 20 year old drivers. That should be AND IS intrastate driving. The intrastate restrictions do create some anomalies where a driver can drive hundreds of miles across the state, but not across the state line next door. Given that a lot of our major markets, especially in the eastern half of the country, are located near state lines this needs to be addressed. With today’s technology it would be easy enough to simply restrict younger drivers to a distance radius from their domicile. And that might vary by geography. A 300 mile radius for a young driver based in DFW might be just fine, but not so good for one based based in Pittsburgh. And maybe it’s 500 miles for a young driver in Billings, Montana.

But the industry should think twice about opening the doors too much in their efforts to increase the driver pool. To build a safe, sustainable population of drivers the compensation has to make sense. Get the freight rates where they need to be in order to do that. And then if you still have a shortage of drivers….raise the rates some more.

Mamaw Was Right

A few weeks ago I wrote about Choices. The pursuit of Freedom and Happiness versus accepting Responsibility and fulfilling your Commitments. This isn’t something that just popped into my head. It’s always there, for all of us, whether we want to face it or not.

I closed that blog entry with a quote from Jordan Peterson: “If you fulfill your obligations everyday you don't need to worry about the future.” If you haven’t read or listened to Jordan Peterson, I recommend him highly. His book, 12 Rules For Life: An Antidote to Chaos, is one of the best of its kind I’ve ever read. It certainly makes my short-list of books I’ll read more than once. Another one on that list is David Brooks’ “The Road To Character”. You should read that one too.

Here are just a few quotes from these two books:

“Humility is the awareness that there’s a lot you don’t know and that a lot of what you think you know is distorted or wrong.”- David Brooks

“The better ambitions have to do with the development of character and ability, rather than status and power. Status you can lose. You carry character with you wherever you go, and it allows you to prevail against adversity.” – Jordan Peterson

“Recovering from suffering is not like recovering from a disease. Many people don’t come out healed; they come out different.”- David Brooks

“In a crisis, the inevitable suffering that life entails can rapidly make a mockery of the idea that happiness is the proper pursuit of the individual.” – Jordan Peterson

“Sin is not some demonic thing. It’s just our perverse tendency to fuck things up, to favor the short term over the long term, the lower over the higher. Sin, when it is committed over and over again, hardens into loyalty to a lower love.”- David Brooks

“But the story of the golden calf also reminds us that without rules we quickly become slaves to our passions—and there’s nothing freeing about that.” – Jordan Peterson

“Change your behavior and eventually you rewire your brain.”- David Brooks

“What you aim at determines what you see.” - Jordan Peterson

And interestingly enough, both Brooks and Peterson include this quote in their books: “The line separating good and evil passes not through states, nor between classes, nor between political parties either—but right through every human heart.”- Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

I have been thinking a lot about what Brooks and Peterson have to say in these books and why I am so inclined to agree with them. And I keep coming back to Mamaw, my maternal grandmother. Mamaw had a rough life. One of 11 children growing up on a hard-scrabble farm southwest of Fort Worth. And then a farmer's wife until the day she died. She worked from dawn to dusk and beyond everyday of her life. She focused on her family. She took care of everybody. Raised her kids and then just about raised her grandkids. She had a good husband, my Papaw. He was as good as they come. But she was the rock. Tough as nails and knew that this life was no picnic.

She also knew that prayers often go unanswered, or you don’t get the answer you want. She also knew that cursing God and shaking your fist at Him would only make things worse, not for Him but for you. She had faith in the future, not in this life, but in the next. And she believed that it was her job to make a positive difference in the here and now because the here and now needs all the help it can get.

Jordan Peterson talks a lot about the suffering that comes with living life in these bodies on this planet. He also says that the purpose of life is finding the largest burden you can bear and bearing it. Take up your cross, that sort of thing. It’s a hard message, but it’s the truth. Mamaw was right.

Another School Shooting

Yesterday a 17 year old student in Santa Fe, Texas killed fellow students and teachers, 10 in all. It would have been more had he been armed with semi-automatic weapons. In this case the killing was done with a .38 revolver and a shotgun. So the gun control debate will expand and become only more heated.

I am on the record as being for a ban on high-capacity, semi-automatic weapons. Certainly assault rifles at minimum. Tighter regulations and more enforcement of existing laws would be good things. But it wouldn’t have stopped this event. (Unless it would have kept this shooter’s father from owning a revolver and a shotgun. And even then, my bet is that this young man would have found other ways to wipe out his tormentors. Perhaps not as effective or perhaps much worse).

If stricter gun regulations are not enough, what else and what now? We can tighten security at our schools and public gathering places. It might help and it probably doesn’t hurt. But those with a strong motivation to kill people will find a way. Establish security check points and a killer will target those waiting to go through security. Protect the buildings, but be prepared to pick up the dead in the parking lot.

Do all you can do to protect people and limit the death toll. More gun control and better security. These are givens. Just do it. But understand that “the virus” is out there ready to infect anyone who feels mistreated, disrespected or dismissed. And like any virus it will adapt and continue to spread. And there seems to be no cure. Cain killed his brother Abel and it’s been all downhill from there.

These days those with an ax to grind have plenty of options and more than enough examples of how to “get even”. We can limit those options and take more stringent security measures. But in a world that increasingly believes all truth is relative, that right and wrong depend on your perspective; and personal responsibility is something you only have to consider when it’s your fault, and it’s never your fault; our stories will all too often be written in blood.

Choices

“If you want any one thing too badly, it's likely to turn out to be a disappointment.” – Gus McCrae, from Lonesome Dove by Larry McMurtry

I’m an old guy. Old enough to remember my family telling stories of the real old days. Old enough to have heard first-hand stories from family members about the dust bowl and the depression. Old enough to have had a father and uncles who fought in WWII. Old enough to remember how we lived without central heat and air, or more than one bathroom, or color TV (much less 200 channels), or cell phones, or the internet, or hip and knee replacements. Old enough to remember when divorce was rare and few children were born out of wedlock. I grew up in a time where kids were free to wander all over the place until after dark and neighbors knew who you were. Experienced the cultural revolution of the 60’s & 70’s, the “greed is good” era of the 80’s and 90’s and now the digital age and the battle for social justice and equality.

So I have lived some life and gained a bit of perspective. And I have learned. Mostly learned the hard way by making bad choices and suffering the consequences. What I have learned is that life often comes down to choices between Commitment and Responsibility versus Freedom and Happiness. Most of the pain in my life has resulted from decisions to pursue Freedom and Happiness at the expense of Commitment and Responsibility.

I think it’s fair to say that since the end of WWII, our country has pretty much gone down that same path. Where Freedom and Happiness too often take precedence over Commitment and Responsibility, societies breakdown. Certainly the desire for Freedom and Happiness has been a positive factor in the advance of civilization. Fire, the wheel, the remote control, Viagra…all in the pursuit of Freedom and Happiness. So Freedom and Happiness are not bad things.

America itself was born out of an innate human desire for Freedom and Happiness. And when Freedom and Happiness are balanced with Commitment and Responsibility, the outcomes tend to be very positive. Are they perfect? Of course not. We can all point to abuses and oppression thrust upon groups of people under the guise of Commitment and Responsibility. There just has to be a balance.

Today, in America, the pendulum has swung way too far in the direction of Freedom and Happiness. Forsake Commitment and Responsibility for Freedom and Happiness and you end up with too many divorces, too many children born out of wedlock or raised by single parents, or a relative or a stranger. Make Freedom and Happiness a priority in education and you end up with a lot of people unprepared to live or make a living on their own. Make Freedom and Happiness a priority and those in power pass laws and establish policies to benefit those in power and those whom they need on their side in order to remain in power. Make Freedom and Happiness a priority and the rich will get richer until the poor have had enough. (And we are getting there, if not there already). Make Freedom and Happiness a priority and you will vote for Hope and Change or to Make America Great Again even if the person you’re voting for is unqualified.

My sense is that we are close to a tipping point. While Millennials are often criticized for being spoiled and pampered or too wrapped up in social justice causes, I think a lot of them have learned from the mistakes of their parents and grandparents. Maybe buying all of the house you can afford, isn’t such a good idea. Maybe putting your career ahead of your family isn’t the best life strategy. Perhaps spending a Saturday on a community service project instead of on the golf course will make you and your community better. Some are going back to church or at least thinking about it. Some of them are even listening to us old guys who have made the mistake of pursuing Happiness and Freedom at the expense of Commitment and Responsibility.

“If you fulfill your obligations everyday you don't need to worry about the future.”
― Jordan B. Peterson

Is Anybody Out There?

The ratio of unemployed persons to job openings is now down to 1.1, meaning there are 1.1 unemployed people per job opening. There are currently over 6 million job openings in this country. Just as a point of reference there were less than 2.2 million in July 2009. Now you can pick at the data noting that we’re not counting all of the potential workforce. That we have a lot of drop-outs. Or that the “job opening” data is questionable. That many of these openings are not really “open”, that some companies are always looking for certain types of people, but that doesn’t mean they will hire.

OK, so the data isn’t perfect. But it is relative and going from 2.2 million job openings to over 6.0 million means something. Back in July 2009 when we had just under 2.2 million job openings, there were over 14.5 million unemployed people looking for work, a 6.6 to 1 ratio. Today’s ratio of 1.1 to 1 tells us there are around 6.6 million people looking for work. In July 2009 the number of employed people was just over 139 million. Today that number is 155 million. So we’ve covered 9 million of the “out of work and looking” from July 2009 and added another 7 million to the employment roles. What’s even more interesting is that the labor participation rate hasn’t changed much. In July 2009 59.3% of the population was employed. Today it’s 60.4%. The “civilian” labor force participation rate in July 2009 was actually higher (65.5%) that it is today (63.0%).

Slice it anyway you want to and the message is the same, we don’t have enough qualified workers to fill all of the jobs that need to be filled. Unemployment is still personal and if you are among the unemployed, especially the long-term unemployed, all of these “job openings” aren’t doing you much good. There are a lot of reasons why some folks can’t get a job. Some can be overcome, some cannot and some are against the law. Life isn’t fair and neither is the job market even when we pass laws to make it so. It is a competition and when you are unable to compete or are not allowed to compete, the result is the same…unemployment. But that aside, the reality is that there are simply not enough “employable” people for the jobs that need to be filled where they need to be filled.

I mentioned a few weeks ago that the generation on the way up is significantly larger than the generation on the way out: 150 million Gen X and Gen Z replacing 80 million Baby Boomers. This will make a positive difference in some job markets. But we are still likely to face significant shortages in skilled trades and the no-collar/blue-color labor market. In the mean time, employers will be forced to adjust: increase compensation, substitute capital (technology) for labor, re-design jobs to make them more attractive or move the work to where the workers are. Things will change. They must.