Paul Begala

Eric Boehlert at Media Matters for America has exploded the myth that UAW autoworkers make $70 or more per hour. And yet serious news people like Mika Brzezinski continue to cite it. It just ain’t true. UAW workers are paid $28 an hour. That’s wages, not including health care and retirement, but there’s no way that health and retirement benefits can constitute over $40 per employee per hour. As Boehlert points out, the $70 figure comes from adding together all of GM’s health care costs (including retirees), all of its labor costs and all of its pension costs. The woes of the Big Three are legion―and most can be laid at the feet of executives who would not make the fuel-efficient, low-emission cars the world wants. The exploding health care costs, of course, are not the fault of the Big Three, but rather of right-wingers who continue to kill any proposal for universal national health care, which every other successful capitalist nation has. So before you go believing the oft-repeated media myth that somehow what’s ailing America is that we pay our blue collar working stiffs too much, check out the facts here. Funny, I don’t hear my fellow pundits and journalists complaining that the reason media companies are in trouble is because they’re paying us too much.