And the alternative would be ... well, what exactly?
According to this NYT Editorial, heartless capitalists are once again victimizing labor:
Left unmentioned is what the exploiter class is to do instead.
Perhaps that is because the NYT editorial staff believes that employer-sponsored health insurance is free, just like the employer-paid portion of social security is free. And that there are pink sparkly unicorns.
Hint for the NYT editorial staff, in order to avoid having villages across the US worried they are missing their idiots. Repeat as often as required, no matter how long it takes: there is no such thing as free.
The latest annual survey of employer health benefits contains good news for the employers but bad news for their workers. The good news is that the average total premium for employer-sponsored health insurance (typically paid partly by employers and partly by their workers) rose only a modest 3 percent this year for family plans, reaching $13,770 in 2010.
The bad news for workers is that their share of the premiums soared by 14 percent, reaching almost $4,000, while the amount employers contributed did not increase. In other words, employers shifted virtually all of the increased premium costs to their hapless workers, who were in a weak position to resist in an economy where there were few other jobs to jump to.
Left unmentioned is what the exploiter class is to do instead.
Perhaps that is because the NYT editorial staff believes that employer-sponsored health insurance is free, just like the employer-paid portion of social security is free. And that there are pink sparkly unicorns.
Hint for the NYT editorial staff, in order to avoid having villages across the US worried they are missing their idiots. Repeat as often as required, no matter how long it takes: there is no such thing as free.
posted by Hey Skipper at 11:55 PM
5 Comments:
True. Nothing is free. However since some of us get away without paying their fair share while the rest of us pick up their portion of the burden, wouldn't it be fair to say, that for them, at least, lots of stuff is free?
The real problem here is that the NYT editorial board is so -- diplomacy fails here -- comprehensively stupid that they publish such obvious rubbish.
There is NO way to deal with increasing health care costs that does not come out of the pockets of workers.
Employer provided health coverage is already in lieu of salary (as is the employer matched social security tax, which the social security administration tells me every year comes out of the employers pocket instead of my own), so forcing workers to directly pay more of their own costs is just pocket shifting.
Of course, employers could pass the increase on by raising prices.
Which has exactly the same effect.
Its amazing these people are let out of the house without continuous adult supervision.
50 years ago, the CEOs of the largest companies in the US made 10 times as much as their average workers. 20 years ago, they made 200 times as much. Last year, they made about 5000 times as much. Nothing is free, but those multimillion dollar salaries (not counting the bonuses, options, stock grants, bottomless expense accounts, etc.) also come out of the pockets of the workers.
Do you suppose it's possible for some of the health care costs to come out of the pockets of the managers, or are we wedded to a winner-take-all policy where (again, last year) the richest 500,000 people in the US sucked up more of the GDP gains than the lowest 180 MILLION people?
I will cheerfully admit that if I were making $10-100 million a year, I too would be complaining about all those minimum wage moochers not paying their fair share! I'd be downright self-righteous about it as well. Why, I'd have to raise prices, or cut wages (but not mine!!!!)
flintc,
Your numbers are way off. According to the AFLCIO website (which isn't going to put CEO compensation in a favorable light, to say the least), shows "Average CEO to Average Worker Pay Ratio[s]" as going from 107 twenty years ago to 263 last year. Given that your numbers are orders of magnitude off, I didn't bother reading the rest of your comment. Nice try though.
Gotta give trolls credit. They're scouring the blogosphere and commenting on blogs where I've never seen them before. The VC has a particularly bad infestation.
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