Deregulation of government control over transportation was a central weapon of the policy. Trucking and airline transportation were “set free.” Non-union “cut-rate” airlines and trucking companies proliferated, often with low or no safety standards. Accident rates climbed, wage levels of union workers plunged. While the Reagan “recovery” was turning young stock traders into multi-millionaires with a seeming push of a computer key, it was reducing the skilled blue-collar workforce of the population into lower standards of living. No one in Washington paid much attention. After all, the
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A good point is made in this chapter on the mafia like behaviour of powerful influence groups.
However, things have changed around 1980s. Technology revolution was starting and there’s no point glorifying ‘blue collar’. Just shows lack of balance in thinking.
