Reporting From Planet FYIGM

WPA Federal Art Project
[New York, between 1936 and 1939]
Library of Congress

Weekdays, my alarm clock is set to pre-dawn NPR, since "Morning Edition" is annoying enough to make me bolt out of bed to turn down the volume. Once I'm up, I have to keep the sound on, to stay aware of the time while I struggle to get ready for work and out the door.

If I were a retired old fogey with ample free time—instead of an OF who can expect to work until dropping—there would be daily fodder for writing indignant e-mails to the network.

Some segments particularly stand out for egregiousness, and I always mean to check out those transcripts. But as I'm also running late and about to spend 8 hours having my brains sucked out—by the time I remember to look at NPR's site, I can rarely find the right date or segment.

But this Friday I had to make a point of looking for this.

An installment of the grating "Planet Money" series informs us that the proposed "Cadillac tax"

is a tax on the most expensive health care plans. Executives with gold-plated plans don't like it and neither do labor unions, whose workers have generous plans. But many economists say it could help everyone in the long run.

To illustrate the "he said/she said, but an expert will settle this" principle, the reporters take this $43,000 a year call center worker ...

I have asthma and I've had it since I was probably 10, 12 years old. And it seems to be progressively getting worse. I pay over $1,500 a year for my medication. And I need those medications to live. And I heard some senators wanted to tax our health care benefits. I just couldn't believe it.

... and introduce her to a university economist. Because, according to these crack reporters—

DAVID KESTENBAUM: Economists on this issue feel lonely, sad and very misunderstood.
CHANA JOFFE-WALT: Well, yeah, because economists use math and charts to make their arguments. Labor unions use emotion and advertisements featuring sympathetic characters with asthma.

There will be no pausing to ask why the medication should cost $1,500 a year.

The ensuing exchange between worker and economist is grotesque.

Ms. Stanley, who is worried about sheer survival, is assured by Professor Stearns that her costs would go up, but only if AT & T keeps her current, expensive plan. Which they surely won't do—they will switch to a cheaper plan, using the savings to give her a raise.

Among the most painful parts—

Ms. STANLEY: They are not going to give us I'm at top wage, right now. Only cost I get - only wage increase I get is the cost of living.
Prof. STEARN: But they are getting something in return. If you were to say to them, we are willing to give up $8000 of health insurance benefits, then I don't see any reason why they wouldn't be willing to do that.
Ms. STANLEY [Panic rising in her voice]: No, they're not, it's not the way it works in bargaining at all. I know they are not going to give me that.
JOFFE-WALT: What is your proof, though, how do you know that is not going to happen?
Ms. STANLEY: That hasn't changed for 18 years.
JOFFE-WALT: Economists are convinced that this will happen. They say there's lots of data showing when employers pay more for health benefits, they pay less in wages. So, it should work in reverse. Less in benefits, more money to wages.

At first, I take the increasingly strangled tone of the worker's voice to be due to terror, as she comes to realize she's been ambushed into talking about her employer on national radio. But as she's in a union, she may have some protection against retaliation.

Then, I decide her tone must really be from frustration at trying to get through to someone so divorced from reality he has to be told that passing savings to workers is "not the way it works."

Not only can he not comprehend, he clearly thinks she is the stupid one—

Prof. STEARN: When was the last time you had a medical emergency?
Ms. STANLEY: I went to the ER seven years ago when I broke my arm.
Prof. STEARN: It sounds like you don't need the health benefit plan that you have. On the whole, my guess is you're losing money on your health insurance. You would benefit from having a worse health benefit plan and taking that extra money and getting higher wages.
Ms. STANLEY: I disagree.
Prof. STEARN: But you should change your mind.

The patronizing of this woman by NPR and its "expert"—the type whose abstractions have done so much to endorse the turning of this country into what we are now—is infuriating. As usual, Upton Sinclair's observation applies: "It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it."

I'm still steaming about the tenured jerk, who sounds completely sincere—he seems to have no agenda beyond promoting post-Reagan conventional thinking (and he might very well be comfortable voting Democratic). A man so expert, he can ignore all of the last 30 years to claim that corporate savings will go to raising wages of ordinary drudges. When it's a fucking wonder that AT&T hasn't outsourced this woman's call center to India yet.

I've been working on my plan of starting the year by reading about Great Depression topics.

And looking at WPA art: there's some wonderful stuff that I plan to post over the coming months. But it's also a painful reminder of how far we've been pushed from public expenditures being allowed to benefit the public. And of how we've entered a fourth decade when distribution of wealth upward is the unquestioned norm.

This week, the starter gun was fired for corporate money to take control of all elected offices outright.

And this week was the anniversary of Obama's inauguration. A year ago, but feeling light years away in terms of the possibilities that had seemed to exist, at the time. Not that any sane person expected a magic wand to be waved. But some of us did expect movement in a good direction—instead of a year of wasted time and one-sided "bipartisanship," all while the right tastes blood and acts accordingly.

Corporations will not be subjected to laws by a government they own. But there will be increasingly harsh ones—including "economic laws"—for all of us surplus humanity who have to live on the real Planet Money, locked down by its rulers, Corporate Persons.