Hi Brian, The articles to which you (usefully) draw our attention on CommonDream web site are a mixed bunch. However, the latest one you cite here is confused, confusing and tendentious, I'm afraid.
At 15:07 07/03/02 -0500, you wrote: <http://www.commondreams.org/views02/0307-05.htm> For example (to choose one confusing item), Laura Flanders cannot decide whether it's 600,000 steel workers who stand to lose their jobs (second paragraph) or 150,000 (ninth paragraph). (By the way, I made a typo in my own analysis [6 March: Gulf War II, etc]. I typed 30,000 but meant 130,000.) Like articles of a similar nature, this would take hours of analysis and Harrellian typing-speed to put right, so I'll confine myself to some brief (but highly relevant) facts which Laura Flanders doesn't mention: Fact 1: There are two steel industries in America. The traditional steel industry (Old Steel) employs about 130-150,000 workers. They have had high wages for decades and their unions have also 'negotiated' highly beneficial health care and pension agreements with their employers. The 600,000 steel worker pensioners have benefits far beyond any that ordinary American pensioners enjoy. This would be fine -- except that neither the employers or employees have funded this remarkable state of affairs. There's a $10-12 billion void. This is an egregious lack of responsibility by both employers and unions. Fact 2: Old Steel mills are a mixture of highly inefficient, vastly overmanned units and ones that have been modernised in recent years -- the same partial picture that has been happening in Europe and Japan. The problem is that they haven't been able to modernise fast enough to be able to finance the pension and health benefits for their 600,000 pensioners. Fact 3: Old Steel mills produce common or garden steel but also a variety of special steels. (It is these special steel mills which I think Bush wants to protect in order to be sure of being able to supply the armaments industry in the coming year or so in order to boost production of stealth bombers and tanks -- needed for the Middle East.) Fact 4: There's also a new mini-mill steel industry (New Steel) in America which is highly efficient. However, it mainly exists on re-cycling scrap steel and doesn't produce the special steels. Fact 5: The 8-30% tariff now mean that the automobile industry in America faces higher steel costs because Old Steel will now have less incentive to become efficient. These higher prices will spill over into the showroom cost of the automobile, so for the sake of helping Old Steel workers Bush is really acting against the average American consumer. (In fact, Bush is prejudicing the possibility of increased consumer spending during the remainder of this year -- and lifting the country out of recession. So his decision [his advisers' decision!] has been taken for serious reasons way beyond sympathy for the Old Steel workers and their mostly incompetent employers.) Keith __________________________________________________________ “Writers used to write because they had something to say; now they write in order to discover if they have something to say.” John D. Barrow _________________________________________________ Keith Hudson, Bath, England; e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] _________________________________________________
