And while I don't think any American corporations are having trouble competing with foreign corporations, there are two advantages the foreign corporations do have over American corporations -- executive salaries and universal government-run health insurance.
The chart above highlights the first of these reasons. Executive salaries are way too large and out of any reasonable proportion to worker wages. In most developed nations, the ratio of executive salaries (for CEOs) ranges from 11-1 (in Japan) to 22-1 (in Great Britain). In the United States, this ratio is 475-1 (meaning the average CEO makes $475 for every $1 paid to the company's average worker. Of course, this brings up the argument over whether the U.S. ratio is so out of whack because CEOs are overpaid or because American workers are underpaid. I suspect it is some of both, but it needs to be fixed.
The second advantage that foreign corporations have over American corporations is that they do not have to provide health insurance for their employees. While they may have to pay some into their country's government run universal health insurance system (which not only their workers, but all citizens qualify for), it is nowhere near as much as American corporations have to pay for private insurance contracts.
I am still amazed that American corporations (and other businesses) didn't fight for the establishment of a single-payer government-run health insurance system (like Medicare) for all citizens. They could be saving a ton of money -- most of the money they now spend on private health insurance for workers.
But the simpletons running American corporations are really interested in solving the real problems of American corporations. It's far easier to just whine about taxes (which they have no intention of paying anyway).
Actually, in many of the above countries companies *do* pay for their worker's health care. For example, Germany is similar to ObamaCare with the (sadly non-existent) public option in that companies pay worker's health insurance (either public wellness fund for the given industry or private health insurance, Germany has both), with a separate Medicare-style wellness fund for the unemployed / disabled / students. What they don't have are the ridiculously high healthcare expenses of the United States because they regulate their healthcare industry to prevent doctors from saying "Your money, or your life!" to people with life-threatening illnesses. Here in the US, family doctors who treat everyday illnesses make less money than I do as a software engineer, while cancer and heart specialists make millions just by virtue of being able to say "your money, or your life, which one do you care more about?" Which is just plain wrong, and isn't allowed anywhere in the civilized world other than the United States. Which, BTW, doesn't result in shortages of doctors -- the USA is something like #12 in the world in the number of doctors per population. Hmm...
ReplyDeleteAnd of course health care corporations, drug companies, etc.... only in the USA are they allowed to make trillions by literally saying "your money or your life" to people. The point being that you can no more have a free market in health care than you can have in muggings, because as with a mugging, you have only one life, and if someone says hand them all your money or you die, that's not a market -- that's a crime. And should be treated as such via regulation -- as in every other civilized country on the planet.