Ted Rall for January 04, 2023

Oh, come ON, Ted.

Everybody knows inflation is all Biden’s fault.

Unhappy?

Take spirit air

Another kind of vulture capitalism.

Does Ted get any current news?

Hammer, meet nail. Very good, Ted. Perfect.

I completely agree Ted…but I’m surprised you didn’t find a way to blame Biden.

…instead of increased supply to meet that demand

Take Amtrak folks; make it work.

Indeed, by definition.

The chaos in the US airline industry is another disaster we can attribute to Ronald Reagan, who threw out the regulations that had maintained stability – controlling routes, prices, and standards. Yes, we got cheaper fares – and Americans have pretty much demonstrated that’s all they care about, or they would never, ever, ever fly Spirit airlines – but we also got overworked crews, dirty planes, crappy service, and poor maintenance on planes and systems, as well as an eventual consolidation of smaller airlines into larger airlines run badly. And that doesn’t even count his crushing the air traffic controllers’ union, which made flying FAR more dangerous for YEARS to satisfy his anti-union hunger.

I used to like flying, and I did a lot of it (at one point I had one gold and three silver frequent flyer cards). Now, unless it is an international flight, preferably on a non-American airline, it’s just a hassle at best, and a painful, miserable experience more typically. I take the train from Boston to New York, and if we had a real high-speed train system I’d take that everywhere I could.

Ohmigod, I had almost this exact same conversation with a Republican relative of mine on New Years Day. He argued that businesses are completely justified in dramatic price increases in times of difficulty. When I pointed out that was price gouging, he got very indignant about it. He explained repeatedly that it isn’t price gouging if a business has an opportunity to make more money and that was how capitalism worked.

That’s capitalism.

United is so chinchy that you might find credit card readers installed on restroom doors one day soon.

Kinda like the Feds raising the interest rate.. because of the demand (AKA inflation).

When I was a kid phone service was through a handful of tightly regulated regional monopolies. You had a choice of one service provider, one calling plan, and paid a monthly rent for using the one or two phone models the company allowed you to use. Glacially slow innovation of phone service turned into an avalanche of improvements as soon as regulation was swapped for free market competition. Nobody has nostalgia for their black rotary phone with $20 long distance calling charges.

You get paid for these brilliant observations, Ted? Nice work if you can get it.

simple solution: take the train. At least they were running while all the airline passengers were camped out in airports.

FUN fact: Southwest is one of a handful of airlines with no service agreements with other airlines or hotels. What that means is: if they cancel your flight, it’s up to you to pay your own way if you don’t want to wait in the airport until Southwest can get around to putting you on a different plane.

Other airlines (e.g. United and American Airlines) will route you to a competitor’s planes because of these kinds of agreements, or put you in a hotel until a plane is available.

Gee, combining deregulation and permitting rampant mergers to create an airline oligopoly had consequences? Who knew?

Stop flying so much. Huge contributor to greeenhouse gasses.