[North-NV-Greens] Fwd: [usgp-dx] Low wages, the safety net, & national health insurance (Paul Krugman, NY Times)

[Paul Etxeberri]

>
>
>Always Low Wages. Always.
>By PAUL KRUGMAN
>
>The New York Times, May 13, 2005
>http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/13/opinion/13krugman.html?
>
>
>Last week Standard and Poor's, a bond rating
>agency, downgraded both Ford and General Motors
>bonds to junk status. That is, it sees a
>significant risk that the companies won't be able
>to pay their debts.
>
>Don't cry for the bondholders, but do cry for the
>workers.
>
>Standard and Poor's downgraded GM and Ford sooner
>rather than later because it believes that the
>public is losing interest in S.U.V.'s. But the
>companies were vulnerable because they still pay
>decent wages and offer good benefits, in an age
>when taking care of employees has gone out of
>style. In particular, they are weighed down by
>health care costs for current and retired
>workers, which run to about $1,500 per vehicle at
>G.M.
>
>So the downgrade was a reminder of how far we
>have come from the days when hard-working
>Americans could count on a reasonable degree of
>economic security.
>
>In 1968, when General Motors was a widely
>emulated icon of American business, many of its
>workers were lifetime employees. On average, they
>earned about $29,000 a year in today's dollars, a
>solidly middle-class income at the time. They
>also had generous health and retirement benefits.
>
>
>Since then, America has grown much richer, but
>American workers have become far less secure.
>
>Today, Wal-Mart is America's largest corporation.
>Like G.M. in its prime, it has become a widely
>emulated business icon. But there the resemblance
>ends.
>
>The average full-time Wal-Mart employee is paid
>only about $17,000 a year. The company's health
>care plan covers fewer than half of its workers.
>
>True, not everyone is badly paid. In 1968, the
>head of General Motors received about $4 million
>in today's dollars - and that was considered
>extravagant. But last year Scott Lee Jr.,
>Wal-Mart's chief executive, was paid $17.5
>million. That is, every two weeks Mr. Lee was
>paid about as much as his average employee will
>earn in a lifetime.
>
>Not that many of them will actually spend a
>lifetime at Wal-Mart: more than 40 percent of the
>company's workers leave every year.
>
>I'm not trying either to romanticize the General
>Motors of yore or to portray Wal-Mart as the root
>of all evil. GM was , and Wal-Mart is, a product
>of its time. And there's no easy way to reverse
>the changes.
>
>What should be clear, however, is that the public
>safety net F.D.R. and L.B.J. created is more
>important than ever, now that workers in the
>world's richest nation can no longer count on the
>private sector to provide them with economic
>security.
>
>When they reach 65, most Wal-Mart employees will
>rely heavily on Social Security - if the
>privatizers don't kill it. And many Wal-Mart
>employees already rely on Medicaid to pay for
>health care, especially for their children.
>
>Indeed, a growing number of working Americans
>have turned to Medicaid. As the Kaiser Family
>Foundation points out, that's why children have
>for the most part have retained health coverage,
>despite a sharp decline in employer-based health
>insurance since 2000.
>
>Yet our current political leaders are trying to
>privatize Social Security and reduce benefits.
>And they are slashing funds for Medicaid even as
>they give big tax cuts to people like Mr. Lee.
>
>The attack on the safety net is motivated by
>ideology, not popular demand. The public isn't
>taken with the vision of an "ownership society";
>it seems to want more, not less, social
>insurance. According to a poll cited in a recent
>Business Week article titled "Safety Net Nation,"
>67 percent of Americans think we should guarantee
>health care to all citizens; just 27 percent
>disagree.
>
>The question is whether the public's desire for a
>stronger safety net will finally be seconded by
>corporations that haven't yet adopted the
>Wal-Mart model of minimal benefits and always low
>wages.
>
>Last year Richard Wagoner Jr., G.M.'s chief
>executive, gave a speech about the costs of
>America's "Kafkaesque" health care system that
>sounded a lot like my recent columns. And his
>company has made it clear that it likes Canada's
>system: in 2002 the president of General Motors
>of Canada and the head of the Canadian Auto
>Workers signed a joint letter declaring that "it
>is vitally important that the publicly funded
>health care system be preserved and renewed."
>
>But according to The Journal Register News
>Service, which covered Mr. Wagoner's speech, he
>"stressed later to reporters that he was not
>proposing a national health care plan." Why not?
>
>
>
>
>
>
>Yahoo! Mail
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>
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-- 
Paul Etxeberri

"Forests precede civilizations and deserts follow"   ---Chateaubriand