Friday, November 21, 2008

Common Knowledge

In a must-read about the Big 3 bailout, Jonathan Cohn debunks the $70 an hour myth. I found this passage enlightening, but depressing:
The number only gets to $70 an hour if you include the cost of benefits for retirees--in other words, the cost of benefits for other people. One of the few people to grasp this was Portfolio.com's Felix Salmon. As he noted yesterday, the claim that workers are getting $70 an hour in compensation is just "not true."
Depressing because this fact should be basic knowledge, but, as he notes, it appears that it is not. If we can have a week-long conversation about the Big 3 and their problems without everyone knowing that the high labor costs are legacy costs, then...well...jeebus.

btw, check out that first comment. Yes, unions will just have "give up keeping all those retirees happy." No sense in not destroying tens of thousands of lives while we're at it.

h/t: Bellman

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