My kind of Socialism
11/11/08
[donation]
By Joel Thurtell
GM, Ford Motor Co., Chrysler LLC and the UAW have asked for $50 billion in aid for the industry — $25 billion for general business use and $25 billion to put toward the UAW’s trust fund for retiree health care.
— Detroit Free Press, November 11, 2008
You can’t live in Auto Alley and not be aware that employees of the Big Three car makers, whether they’re managers or blue-collar union workers, have a pretty cushy deal.
Present tense — HAVE a pretty cushy deal, because despite descending to beggar status with their plea for billions in federal aid, the autoworkers have locked in this year’s raises and bonuses.
It’s a point of pride, something to flaunt, that their wages far exceed the norm and they get perks, aka “benefits,” that are the envy of other workers, even those union members who belong to other than UAW locals.
In fact, most workers outside auto manufacturing, and this includes non-auto-related white-collar workers, don’t enjoy benefits that come close to those common in the auto industry.
When it comes to health insurance, most people pay through the nose. And when they get old, they have Medcaid and Medicare, two federally-funded programs open to all which we have thanks to Lyndon Johnson with a posthumous prod from Franklin Roosevelt.
But below retirement age, there are some 43 million Americans who have no health insurance.
None whatsoever.
Now, when the automakers were self-supporting, it was a little hard to say their employees shouldn’t enjoy the best of benefits.
But today, the Big Three are broke, or nearly so, depending on which of the trio of mendicants you look at.
They’re broke, yet they want U.S. taxpayers to pick up the burden of the promises managers and union leaders made during the boom times when their workers had — still have — the sweetest pay, the sweetest retirement, the sweetest health care deals in the country.
Now that Detroit can no longer afford to keep those luxurious promises, the bosses want us — that is, the vast majority of Americans who never had those gold-plated deals — to pay for maintaining auto workers in the style to which they have become accustomed.
Why should taxpayers foot the bill for perks that most of us could never dream of?
Twenty-five billion smackers to support retiree health care?
Sorry, autoworkers — get in line with the rest of us.
I’m not saying UAW members don’t deserve these health benefits.
I am saying that they’re no more deserving than any other American.
The rest of us will be using Medicare and Medicaid. Is that not good enough for workers at the Big Three? If not, why not improve those benefits so we can all enjoy them?
Instead of perpetuating this elite cadre of employees with a $25 billion gift card, why not invest the money in a system that guarantees universal health care for everyone of any age?
I mean a single-payer system like other rational industrial countries have.
That’s right, cut the private insurance companies out entirely.
Oh, I can hear the howls.
Why should health care be a for-profit undertaking?
We have a chance, right now. It’s all the buzz now to say we shouldn’t waste a crisis. Well, let’s use this crisis to start fixing health care from the bottom up, from pre-natal to geriatric.
Does this make me a Socialist?
Fine with me.
Hey, if President Bush and his treasury secretary, Henry Paulson, can nationalize the banking, insurance and housing industry, why not call that Socialist?
And why not federalize the health care industry as well?
No more elites. We’re all in it together.
Drop me a line at joelthurtell(at)gmail.com
