>There has been an epidemic of airliners falling "mysteriously" from the sky
>in recent years...
>
>All these problems are related to "deregulation", a policy that has been
>applied across the board to the trucking, railroad and airline industry. It
>has produced harried operator and maintenance crews. In exchange for profit
>returns that Wall Street brokerage houses can smile on, we get smack-ups on
>Amtrak and airplanes falling out of the sky. Deregulation is not a
>right-wing plot. One of the most forceful advocates is Ted Kennedy, who
>believed that Joe Six-Pack was getting cheated out of affordable air
>travel. I guess neglect and stupidity about air travel runs in the Kennedy
>family.
>
>Meanwhile, as the body count mounts in accidents of these kinds, the two
>party system responsible for forcing deregulation down the throat of the
>American people share equal blame.
And we have gone from having one serious commercial aviation accident
per 140 million miles flown in 1970 to having one serious commercial
aviation accident per 1.4 billion miles flown today. You can indict
capitalism for many reasons, but an increased likelihood of dying in
an airliner crash is not one of them...
Brad DeLong
