> At 11:22 AM -0400 8/6/09, Marv Gandall wrote:
>
>>Bruce Bartlett, a former Treasury official in the Reagan and Bush the
>>Elder
>>administrations, also cited the BLS number in a remarkable (for a
>>conservative) article in Forbes last month defending higher taxation and
>>government spending against the tea baggers to his right in the Republican
>>party:
>>
>>http://www.forbes.com/2009/04/09/tea-party-taxes-opinions-columnists-bartlett_print.html
>>
>>Among other things, Bartlett observed:
>>
>
> [...]
>
>>"In 2008, employer-provided health insurance reduced the cash wages of
>>American workers by 7.9%, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. If
>>businesses didn't have to pay for health insurance, they could afford to
>>pay
>>their workers 7.9% more and be no worse off.
>
> And if pigs had wings, they could fly.
>
> Sure, if employers didn't have to pay health insurance, they *could* pass
> the savings on to their employees. But why *would* they? Why wouldn't they
> just keep it?
>
===============================
Couldn't agree more. What's relevant here is the acknowledgement by your
Republican namesake that the employers aren't burdened by the cost of
company health care plans, as is commonly supposed, but that the cost all
comes out of wages - including the bosses' share of the premiums. The
workers' ability to extract more total compensation from the employers' than
the latter are willing to pay is strictly a function of their bargaining
power, which has been in decline in the unionized industries for some time.