Supply Chain Problem

[RumTumTugger]

Yeah yeah, we heard that tired line of garbage for a year and a half now. My state wasted millions of dollars setting up field hospitals for the 'overwhelming' of hospitals, which we never used. NY had an entire hospital ship sent to them that was barely used (that's beyond the field hospitals they had that were not used. And all the while, nurses danced on TikTok, and hospitals remained relatively empty whilst doctors were forced not to see cancer patients, etc., because we were not determined by the powers that be to be having 'essential' medical issues. A friend of mine and fellow cancer survivor died last week because of pieces of crap in California who kept their lockdown policies in place for months, preventing him from getting his yearly screening and leading to him finally getting a screening nearly a year after he was due, at which point his cancer had returned, and returned hard and fast. But hey, at least some nurses got some tiktok views, and you got to destroy a bunch of small businesses, rite?

And hey, who cares about people not being able to feed their families because of those bare shelves, amirite?

Not to mention that instead of using said hospital ship and field hospitals the Democrat Governor of NY forced nursing homes to take in Covid patients putting the most vulnerable population at risk.

But this is off the thread topic.

Stoic needs to understand that there are plenty of products for the shelves on ships waiting to get into port to be unloaded. Maybe if Biden had called The Transportation Secretary from his paternity leave for an adopted child 2 months before they did those products in the ships would be on the shelves where they belong(or maybe not given his terrible non solutions) Also if Biden had done what Tump did and put America first keeping the manufacturing in America and keeping Trumps policy that woudl have made us self sufficient oil wise by shutting down the new oil pipeline instead of supporting Russia's pipeline the shelves would be full.

[Gondwanaland]

So I guess that's a 'no'.

Correct, people cannot eat air.

[Stoic]

Last I checked, you cannot eat air.

So I guess that's a 'no'.

[Stoic]

Odd wording. Did you mean "Do you have any evidence of people not being able to feed their families?"

I meant to use the same phrasing as the post I was responding to.

[Gondwanaland]

Do you have any evidence of people not being able to feed their families because of bare shelves?

Last I checked, you cannot eat air.

[Ronson]

Do you have any evidence of people not being able to feed their families because of bare shelves?

Odd wording. Did you mean "Do you have any evidence of people not being able to feed their families?"

[Stoic]

And hey, who cares about people not being able to feed their families because of those bare shelves, amirite?

Do you have any evidence of people not being able to feed their families because of bare shelves?

[Gondwanaland]

Given how many people would stay home even without a lockdown

The only reason they stayed home was the lockdown combined with the unemployment moolah.

and how many businesses would have to close because of that, the difference is probably not as great as you believe.

Sorry but that's a whole load of turds. Businesses were destroyed by the policies people like you support and defend. And you dare to try to claim that magically the result would have been the same if you hadn't forced them to close? GTHO.

The biggest difference is that more hospitals would have been overwhelmed, and more people would have died. But I guess that's not as important as keeping the store shelves full.

Yeah yeah, we heard that tired line of garbage for a year and a half now. My state wasted millions of dollars setting up field hospitals for the 'overwhelming' of hospitals, which we never used. NY had an entire hospital ship sent to them that was barely used (that's beyond the field hospitals they had that were not used. And all the while, nurses danced on TikTok, and hospitals remained relatively empty whilst doctors were forced not to see cancer patients, etc., because we were not determined by the powers that be to be having 'essential' medical issues. A friend of mine and fellow cancer survivor died last week because of pieces of crap in California who kept their lockdown policies in place for months, preventing him from getting his yearly screening and leading to him finally getting a screening nearly a year after he was due, at which point his cancer had returned, and returned hard and fast. But hey, at least some nurses got some tiktok views, and you got to destroy a bunch of small businesses, rite?

And hey, who cares about people not being able to feed their families because of those bare shelves, amirite?

[Stoic]

It sure as hell would have run more 'swimmingly' than forcing people to stay home and forcing businesses to close.

Given how many people would stay home even without a lockdown, and how many businesses would have to close because of that, the difference is probably not as great as you believe.

The biggest difference is that more hospitals would have been overwhelmed, and more people would have died. But I guess that's not as important as keeping the store shelves full.

[Gondwanaland]

Don't assume that the economy would have run just swimmingly if there had not been lockdowns.

It sure as hell would have run more 'swimmingly' than forcing people to stay home and forcing businesses to close.

[Ronson]

Recovering from what? Oh, right, liberal lockdown policies pushed on us across the nation.

That's a good program, create a crisis and then take credit for resolving it. The only problem in this case is that it hasn't been resolved.

[Stoic]

Recovering from what? Oh, right, liberal lockdown policies pushed on us across the nation.

Don't assume that the economy would have run just swimmingly if there had not been lockdowns.

[Stoic]

It's been a pretty consistent theme with me how unions mess things up - particularly in law enforcement and education.

However, just for you, I'll post something directly pertaining to this situation, k?

Unions Have Made Supply-Chain Problems Worse

Organized-labor headlines typically offer a zap of top-line shock — UPS is paying some drivers $134,000 a year? Philadelphia is paying a police detective $310,000 a year? — but those six-figure sums don’t capture the true cost.

As can be seen with the enormously costly backup at the port complex in San Pedro, Calif. — which handles about 40 percent of U.S. container-ship cargo — the issue is not so much high wages as highly rigid and inflexible labor practices.

The problem in San Pedro isn’t that the longshoremen are earning, on average, $171,000 a year ($194,000 for a clerk and $282,000 for a foreman) plus the usual generous benefits — the problem is that the ships are not being unloaded in a timely fashion.

Instead, the ships have been sitting at sea. Where there might normally be no more than one ship waiting at anchor for a spot to unload, there recently have been as many as 95.

The Biden administration has responded with an initiative that is perfectly Bidenesque: vague and fuzzy about the details, offering the appearance of action but very little of the real thing. The administration says it brokered a deal under which the twin California ports now operate around the clock. The 24/7 operation began “weeks ago,” according to White House flack Jen Psaki.

You will not be entirely surprised to find that this is not true.

Port authorities tell the Long Beach Post that there is no terminal at either facility currently operating 24/7. What has happened is that the port authority has launched a pilot program under which one terminal at Long Beach (there are seven) will operate 24 hours a day Monday through Thursday. The rest of the week, it will revert to its usual restricted hours. No other terminal is offering 24-hour operations at this time, and none has announced plans to do so.

If there ever is an actual transition to 24/7 operations at the ports, it will take months or years to implement. And it will not solve the fundamental problem — instead, it almost certainly will only replace one rigid and inflexible labor arrangement with a different rigid and inflexible labor arrangement.

I'm pretty sure you could have found that, or something similar, yourself.

I already knew the National Review was anti-union. And though I'm not a fan of the International Longshore and Warehouse Union, they don't seem to be the problem here. The ships aren't being unloaded fast enough because trucks and trains aren't able to take the containers away from the ports fast enough.

Though the executive director of the Port of Los Angeles may be part of the problem. It appears that he thinks the trucking companies should move to 24 hour operations before the port does.

Source: https://www.wsj.com/articles/port-of-los-angeles-stops-short-of-24-hour-operations-unlike-long-beach-11632506723

Gene Seroka, executive director of the Port of Los Angeles, said there is slack in the system that connects inbound and outbound containers to trucks serving inland distribution points. He said 30% of trucking appointment slots for transferring cargo go unused each day, on average, even as dozens of container ships gather offshore waiting for berths and port terminals process record volumes of inbound boxes.

“If that’s not going to be enough we will go to extended hours,” Mr. Seroka said. “But first I’d like to take care of where we are not working so well at the present time.”

The port’s gates are closed during the early-morning hours midweek and have limited hours on Saturdays. They are closed on Sundays.

Mr. Seroka said the port can extend operating hours only if trucking, warehousing and other industries also move toward 24-hour operations. ”You can’t hire labor, you can’t open terminal gates and tell everybody you are open for business and nobody shows up,” he said.

© Copyright Original Source

But I guess we have to keep in mind that the port is run for profit, just like the trucking companies and the shipping companies. I thought you were being sarcastic about fining the ports, which is why I responded sarcastically about fining the trucking companies.

Now I'm starting to think that fining both may be appropriate.

[Mountain Man]

We didn't have empty shelves until people started buying a lot more stuff, because of the recovering economy.

You seriously believe that?

[Gondwanaland]

We didn't have empty shelves until people started buying a lot more stuff, because of the recovering economy.

Recovering from what? Oh, right, liberal lockdown policies pushed on us across the nation.