Healing Ourselves
Who is a bigger threat to the average American worker: the “Party of Davos” or the Republican Party? What policy changes are more likely to improve conditions and prospects for U.S. workers: domestic initiatives like universal health insurance, major new infrastructure investment, and a progressive tax overhaul, or some sort of ill-defined social contract with Canada and Mexico? No one has to tell Jeff Faux about the desirability of ousting Republicans and implementing ambitious domestic policies. But even to the extent that stagnating wages, increasingly cavernous inequalities, and rising insecurity here are attributable to globalization – which is just one very important but not dominant factor – the external policy responses Jeff focuses on seem far less likely to be effective than getting our own house in order.
As anyone who remembers the legendary tpmcafe melee over Gene Sperling’s book from November 2005 can attest (here are links to Kate Cambor’s summaries of all that), the subject of globalization divides progressives more than most issues and played an important role in causing the AFL-CIO to split. The class divisions that Jeff identifies are very real and exacerbate those tensions, which flare up whenever a particular trade agreement or negotiation comes along. But even if you favor, as Jeff does, putting a moratorium on any new agreements and taking a much tougher approach on the environmental and labor standards that would apply to other trading partners, by their nature those policies in and of themselves can’t make things detectably better in the U.S. in the foreseeable future. They would just preserve the unacceptable status quo.
One of the many virtues of focusing instead on universal health insurance is that it would help to address so many of the overlapping economic problems facing the U.S. in one fell swoop. In this context, we are at a competitive disadvantage to other developed countries because our health care system by comparison is less efficient and much costlier to employers, the government, and workers. Implementing an overhaul that would put us more closely to an equal footing with those other countries on health costs would help to offset the pressures that have led to the outsourcing, downsizing, and poor wage growth that are widely blamed on globalization. That’s something progressives don’t need to fight about.
"Who is a bigger threat to the average American worker: the “Party of Davos” or the Republican Party?"
There's a difference?
Seriously though, you are right that solving the health care problem would trickle down benefits to both business and labor.
February 26, 2007 1:17 PM | Reply | Permalink
Thanks Greg Anrig-
Generally you are correct but some economists and pundits believe that major changes in a $2 trillion dollar plus U.S. "disease care" industry would result in significant economic dislocations. Hence they promote incrementalism and the politicians follow their advice.
I disagree and believe that we are far beyond the "incrementalism cure"
We need a much more efficient "health care" system NOW comprised of a combination of
1)Single Payer "Medicare for all" -some level of basic services
2)Private service direct contracts between providers and patients
3)Much more emphasis on Prevention- both individual and institutional
Dr. Rick Lippin
http://medicalcrises.blogspot.com
February 26, 2007 1:47 PM | Reply | Permalink
Greg,
I respectfully disagree. Single payer insurance would represent a huge leap for the US, but I think it ignores salient facts:
1. European nations mostly already have universal care and/or single payer plans, but that doesn't mean they can't put jobs in China. In western Europe it seems they've 'solved' the problems of job losses just by putting people on the dole - that's not desirable - we want productive citizens and not to create a shiftless, criminal underclass.
2. Faux is pointing to the crux of the issue: Elites collude to strip the 'privileges' working people thought they had won in Western democracies like the right to unionize (that one's slipping fast already). Chinese don't have that right and they don't even get to vote on which elites screw them over as we do. Single payer doesn't change that dynamic at all. It's in this way that elites are the enemies of their fellow citizens - it's not just 'tension' it's a war on workers.
You seem to be 'opposing' Faux only by changing the subject to something that is, yes, related to trade but only tangentially.
February 26, 2007 2:23 PM | Reply | Permalink
If we continue dealing with "healthcare" in this country as we are now, by 2016, it is projected, healthcare in this country will cost each man, woman and child respectively $12,000.00 plus per year. If so, we can kiss off access to healthcare - unless we're rich. But, the rich need us to do their slop work, to keep their life-styles up to snuff and if we're all out of commission or dead, they just might consider changing our non-system healthcare.
As it is now, corporations like GM tack on $1500.00/per car to cover employee healthcare costs. Is there a point where employee healthcare costs threaten to put them out of business? If so, reform may be pushed by enough of corporate America to make it happen.
February 26, 2007 2:55 PM | Reply | Permalink
Who is a bigger threat to the average American worker...
The biggest threat to the American worker is the American worker.
People with pensions need slaves to work for 'em and that's why they say: "the next generation will be paying our bills (with their labor and our expectations for comfort)."
And that's why union folks will embrace cheap non-unionized labor, so they can retire and live well off of arbitrage.
February 26, 2007 3:27 PM | Reply | Permalink
if we stopped watching TV, exercised more and watched our diets, many of our health problems would go away-- all w/o government intervention...
my grandmother, who is 90, just bought a treadmill and she'll be starting that March 1st.
February 26, 2007 3:32 PM | Reply | Permalink
it's not just 'tension' it's a war on workers...
Some in labor want a "labor party" that would back labor in congress. I tend to believe in that because unions have traditionally taken the "piece meal approach" and I think that good labor law needs to be at the top. that way, companies, like wal-mart, couldn't twart them...
February 26, 2007 3:38 PM | Reply | Permalink
Re: European nations mostly already have universal care and/or single payer plans, but that doesn't mean they can't put jobs in China.
But they have less reason to as their employers are not stuck with their employees' healthcare bills. Hence when transportation, cultural and other frictional factors are added in, European labor remains competitive with China's. (Note: Europe of course is farther from China, hence tranpsort costs are higher than they are to the US.)
Re: In western Europe it seems they've 'solved' the problems of job losses just by putting people on the dole
This is somewhat true of France, Germany and (to a lesser extent) of Italy. It is not true of Scandinavia or the Netherlands. There free trade is accompanied by a vigorous system of job retraining which actually works: unemployment rates are low and workers who lose jobs really do find new ones. Most US retraining is fairly worthless, either training workers for jobs that are also obsolete and also rushing back into the work force so fast (due to insufficient income support during the training period) that they generally have to settle for the first (usually lower wage) job that comes along.
February 26, 2007 5:00 PM | Reply | Permalink
Let's just look at one example.
Apple reported 1st quarter 2007 (ending December 30, 2006) net profit of $1,000,000,000.00 (That's 1 billion PER QUARTER).
The IPod is built in China where the required workweek is 60 hours, they live in factory housing (deducted from their pay), they get their food from company groceries (at what price above normal), they receive only minor medical care (first aid), have no retirement benefits of any kind and are fired when they can no longer maintain the required number of operations per minute. After paying their living expenses, not a single worker has any savings.
These Chinese factories are producing massive levels of pollution and exposing workers to the worst types of environmental hazards. These toxins are the only long term “benefits” that these workers will receive.
The only difference between this and the old company town of the Robber Barons is that the workers are not going into debt to have the privilege of being a worker for Apple. Meanwhile, Apple executives are reaping windfall salaries, bonuses and illegal backdated stock options worth tens of millions.
I don’t see the benefit to the Chinese worker. Is the rice paddy so bad compared to life in the factory? Perhaps it is the realization that China can no longer provide enough rice paddies for their population to work and so to stave off revolution they have moved their agrarian population into the factory towns. The life of the poor Chinese worker has not improved only the profit margin for Apple.
Some would argue that these profits enrich our American workers through retirement plan and other investments. This profit never finds it way to the average American worker because it is picked off at the top through corporate benefits to the executives such as the Gulfstream jets and then is picked over again by the Wall Street money handlers that take a huge piece for just passing the money from one hand to the other.
Remember that half of all American workers earn less than $33K per year. There’s not a lot of investment activity from someone making $24K per year.
So back to the premise; who benefits from these free trade policies; neither the Chinese nor the American worker, only the Davos elite.
February 27, 2007 8:10 AM | Reply | Permalink