Thread by @scottlincicome

"Lazy crane operators making $250,000 a year exacerbating port crisis, truckers say" news.yahoo.com/lazy-crane-ope…
"one terminal in Long Beach has started using automated cranes, and truckers rejoice when they are summoned to pick up cargo there. It is efficient and quick." 🤔

Reminder: "the unions have for years fought efforts to automate ports on both the West and East coasts—just as they fought containerized shipping and computers decades before that."

cato.org/commentary/ame…

Another reminder: the truckers (Teamsters, at least) aren't exactly blameless in all this too, having opposed NAFTA trucking liberalization (and thus limiting US capacity) for decades...

https://twitter.com/scottlincicome/status/1448998596611919874?t=yzkttLVOVynjPX_o_RrbBw&s=19

Anyway, these issues (& others like the Jones Act) exacerbated our "supply chain problem" by making the US system more brittle, inflexible, & inefficient. Pols in both parties have enabled it for decades. So this crunch will wane, but we'll stay vulnerable w/out better policy. /x

P.s. For those who think this is all ok bc it supports some jobs, pls recall that it comes at the expense of other, far more numerous US workers in the supply chain - incl those at now-idled factories that can't get essential inputs/equipment cato.org/commentary/sta…