Jobs Are About Healthcare?

People forget Republicans aren't in favor of more jobs at good wages. They want to decrease the cost of doing business to keep profits high. Globalization plays right into their hands. Here is an interesting twist on Republican preference for private healthcare. If we had national healthcare, perhaps GM wouldn't be in such bad shape. From Brad DeLong's Semi-Daily Journal is a quote from Krugman's NY Times editorial. He always seems to find a way to make economics compelling.

But job losses at General Motors are part of the broader weakness of U.S. manufacturing... that offers workers decent wages and benefits. And some of that weakness reflects two big distortions in our economy: a dysfunctional health care system and an unsustainable trade deficit.... If the United States had national health insurance, G.M. would be in much better shape than it is... tying health insurance to employment... systematically discourages the creation of good jobs, the type of jobs that come with good benefits.... G.M.'s health care costs are so high in part because of the inefficiency of America's fragmented health care system. We spend far more per person on medical care than countries with national health insurance, while getting worse results.


About the trade deficit... a reorientation of our economy away from industries that export or compete with imports, especially manufacturing, to industries that are insulated from foreign competition, such as housing. Since 2000, we've lost about three million jobs in manufacturing, while membership in the National Association of Realtors has risen 50 percent. The trade deficit isn't sustainable... one of these days the easy credit will come to an end... we'll have to reorient our economy back toward producing things we can export or use to replace imports. And that will mean pulling a lot of workers back into manufacturing. So the rapid downsizing of manufacturing since 2000 - of which G.M.'s job cuts are a symptom - amounts to dismantling a sector we'll just have to rebuild a few years from now.