Very good post in general, even if I am highly sceptical of a bailout, and if the numbers are incorrect (but this has already been pointed out). It is true indeed that the Big 3 suffer from covering pensions and healthcare for their retirees alone, i.e. w/out these costs being spread on the whole economy, whereas the car industry is a much smaller share of the economy (and of employment) than it was 40 or 50 years ago - and in addition with a substantial part of the US-car industry (the foreign owned ones in the South...) not giving the same benefits. Yes, I agree, universal health care would avoid such absurdities, even if it would not be enough to ensure that the Big 3 would become good companies...But be careful: in Europe and Japan, health care is not necessarily government-provided, in most countries it is "government-facilitated" but funded and managed by employers and employees jointly. What is key is that health care is universal and its funding is spread across the entire economy. So how much firms contribute is relative to their current size, not to their size 30 years ago!

Get real. Why would you tack on the present value of things you *may* get in the future, provided the company is still in business and you're still alive?

By that logic, a Walmart worker makes $8/hr, gets $8 or so in fringe benefits, then we can add on $10 for the savings based on the employee discount amortized over the work employment years of the employee, add in the value of Medicaid insurance, food stamps and a few other government benefits. Voila. We have a Walmart employee making $35-40 an hour. We know that's not an accurate representation of the situation either.

Their cars have been shitty cars for as long as I've been alive. Trust me, I've owned a few of them second-hand. The unions should have their dicks chopped off for getting greedy. That will solve everything.

I work as a paralegal for an in-house firm in the securities industry (so I'm a parasite on a parasite), and I make more than $72 an hour in wages and benefits.

$62,000 in wages, another $4,000 in 401K money donations, and health care worth $14,000, for a total of $80,000.00, according to my firm.

I live in a mid-size midwestern city. I don't make anything, I just defend the firm against people sueing it who think the firm lost their money, not themselves. I am far less useful to society than an autoworker. I spent 20 years in a prior life doing that kind of work, so I know of what I speak.

And my body won't give out after 30 years, be covered with cuts and bruises, or be forced to work overtime, punch in, or worry about my job going to Alabama - yet.

So start screaming about the paralegals, folks, would you, and other oppressors of the people! If you even know what an oppresor looks like, that is. From my analysis, people who hate autoworkers know next to nothing about the class structure in the U.S. NADA.

If it would save the not-so Big 3 if the US had 100% health coverage......who will take over that expense to keep the US alive?

article! Go to Washington! Make them do what you suggest!

Are you guys serious??!?! There are 180,000 current workers supporting 540,000 others! It's clear the labor contracts created this efficiency.

Quick quiz: If you get paid $28 an hour and tack on another $20 an hour in fringes like health and employer taxes like FICA and then tack on the current value of future fringes amortized over the workers employment tenure and tack on the value of union-related job guarantees, my bet is you get pretty close to $72.

Your numbers are just as bad as anyone else's--and frankly don't contribute to an honest conversation.

McClelland's article starts with a story about a family friend, who our author routinely tells is bankrupting the automakers. He then goes on to tell how he has a young girlfriend, is still active, and has the audacity to live next to a college professor!

This is class snobbery at its worst. McClelland then decries a nation where "the idea that blue-collar workers should live as well as white-collar workers." Last time I checked, the American dream was not limited to those who worked in offices or managed to get a bachelors degree somehwhere. It's appalling that he thinks of America as a caste system where those with the money to attend college are deserving of a retirement plan and benefits while those who cannot should not be able to live well in retirement.

What my educated friends don't get is Henry Ford's idea that living wages mean that you can afford to buy what's being produced. They've bought into the Walmartization of America, where the less educated must work for poverty-level pay, no retirement and no benefits because they could not afford college. But of course, McClelland calls that as shortsighted as dropping out of college to support your family (as if in his upper middle class world the idea that tuition money just doesn't exist cannot occur.) You can bet that the $9 an hour workers cannot afford payments on a $20,000 car, much less the $30,000 hybrids. Walmart works because they sell cheap which is what they pay their workers. GM cannot expect sales if they pay cheap. People will use public transporation instead.

If snobs like McClelland succeed, then all blue-collar workers will make $9 an hour, live in tiny apartments and end up getting food stamps and Medicaid because they can afford no better. Retirees won't be able to buy new cars; they'll live with their children or eat cat food to survive. All of these costs will be passed on to us indirectly through state taxes, higher costs for medical bills and services. However, that seems to be ok with McClelland. As long as his precious college professor doesn't have to live next to a blue collar worker who put 30 years into a job.

The $72/hr meme is, at best, misleading - at worst, a lie. Add up the companies' total salary and benefits (including all those bloated executive packages and benefits to retired workers), divide by all the current workers, and you get $72, but no particular worker gets that - unless you count executives, who get a whole lot more. An average worker gets $37 or so in combined salary and benefits.

Okay? Are we done with that? Can we move on?

Under Ike, national health care was floated - unions opposed it because they felt they could get a better deal by negotiating with management than by legislation, and management opposed it as creeping socialism. Short-sighted, stupid, and selfish - in retrospect.

Now that we have cleared up those two points, the main thrust of the article is correct - national health care would be the best thing for union workers, corporate shareholders, management, and non-union workers. In fact, all Americans.

Oh, right - not Republican policy-makers: they fear that a working HC system would be a Democrat-creating machine, especially if it is effective and popular. And, I think, part of the GOP mindset really likes the corporate paternalism that company healthcare engenders.