[stickfigure]

absurdity, the best thing to do would be to reduce trucking prices to $0

What is absurd about that? If we could wave a magic wand and reduce the real transportation cost of goods to 0, it would have massive beneficial effects in the overall economy. In large part we're seeing the benefit of that in the macro due to the (formerly) falling cost of global shipping.

It's magical thinking that an increase in the cost of transport won't have some sort of negative effect on the economy.

[fzeroracer]

This isn't an increase in the cost of transport, this is an increase in the cost of trucking. There's a subtle but very important distinction there because the actual human cost of trucking (ie wages, healthcare etc) is likely much smaller than the costs of fuel, maintenance and many more externalities.

Yes, if you could magically teleport goods from one location to another, that would be fantastic for the economy and terrible for truckers. I think it's more magical thinking however to look at one statistic and assume that it would lead to doom and gloom, as many did when Seattle decided to change the minimum wage to $15.

That said, if we believe that reducing the cost of trucking at all costs is important to the economy: Why not just remove all worker protections? In fact, why not just not pay workers at all? We have plenty of prisoners that could be truck drivers.

We can kick out all of the high earning truck drivers being leeches on the economy by increasing the cost of transport and replace them with something far cheaper until automation comes along. That sounds like a good idea, yeah?