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Home Publications Blogs Beat the Press Washington Post Fires Another Shot in the Class War

Washington Post Fires Another Shot in the Class War

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Thursday, 07 June 2012 04:44

The Washington Post doesn't leave its readers in doubt over whose side it takes in the class war. It routinely uses both its opinion and news pages to attack ordinary workers and the programs on which they depend, like Social Security and Medicare. It rarely points out obvious facts, like the projections of exploding costs for Medicare are primarily driven by the excessive rents collected by folks like drug companies, suppliers of health care equipment, and highly paid medical specialists.

In keeping with this spirit, the Post told readers about the "need for unions to reorganize" following Scott Walker's victory in his recall election. By "reorganize" the Post doesn't mean developing new strategies to protect their members' interests. It meant accepting lower pay and benefits.

That call would make sense if there was evidence that union pay was substantially out of line with private sector pay. It turns out that this is not the case.

It is also striking how obsessed the Post is over the need to reform unions when it is so little concerned about incredibly larger abuses in the corporate sector. Corporate management routinely rips off its shareholders by appointing boards who are almost completely subservient to management.

This allows the top executives of even money-losing companies to collect paychecks in the tens of millions of dollars. While the Post is little bothered by this ripoff of the public, it rants endlessly over autoworkers who earn $60,000 a year or public employees who can get pensions of $2,000 a month.

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written by Benjamin Kupersmit, June 07, 2012 8:29
i am struck by how easily the chattering class is sickened by the greed of teachers and police - Don't they know it's a recession and everyone has to suck it up? - while completely accepting golden parachutes and private islands as the minimum a person can ever accept for being a job creator.
Still don't make no sense!
written by Sean, June 07, 2012 10:21
Great post Dean but I think you concede too much when you note that the need to reorganize "would make sense if there was evidence that union pay was substantially out of line with private sector pay"

The prevailing market wage for a profession may be substantially out of line with the socially optimal equilibrium point. For example, lets say we lived in a world in which unionized public school teachers earned twice as much as their private sector counterparts but delivered consistently better test scores. Should we then attempt to lower pay and benefits because they're out of line with private sector pay?

PS: I realize I'm building a bit of a straw man here but it's just to emphasize the point that prevailing market wages may not be the best reference point. As you point out, US doctors earn approx twice as much as their counterparts in other wealthy countries due to a multitude of protectionist barriers that artificially inflate their wages.

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About Beat the Press

Dean Baker is co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research in Washington, D.C. He is the author of several books, his latest being The End of Loser Liberalism: Making Markets Progressive. Read more about Dean.

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