Supply Side Empathy

IT IS NOT TRUE that business owners/investors/stock holders take all the risk in capitalist endeavors. Workers take on risk. Labor and time are investments. Even when a wage has been agreed to and paid in return.

Case in point:

The IUE-CWA, United Steelworkers (USW) and the Operating Engineers (IUOE) plan to appeal a bankruptcy judge’s approval late last week of a plan to allow the new GM, which now is owned primarily by the taxpayers, to take away health coverage from 55,000 retirees at some GM and GM Delphi plants. [AFL-CIO]

Just as standardized test scores are a piss poor method of assigning a value to young people, “net worth,” is a piss poor way to evaluate a person’s net worth. When conferring esteem based on monetary measures, one ends up rewarding the willingness to engage in exploitation.