this about expresses my view as well.

[acroyear]

Good Math, Bad Math : Another Bad Metric Error: Wages vs. Labor Costs:

None of this should be taken as my supporting bailing out the automobile companies. I honestly can't make up my mind whether I support that. On one side, the companies really, basically deserve to fail. They made huge quantities of money selling giant SUVs for a few years, and used it to go on a spending spree, paying ridiculous amounts of money to their executives, and investing next to nothing in actually planning for the future. Now they're producing cars no one wants to buy, and due to their own stupidity, they've got no capacity to produce things that people want. That sounds like a formula for failure - and it is. It would be downright criminal for the assholes running those companies to be allowed to pocket the money they made destroying them, have the government rescue them, and then pocket the resulting profits when they get back on their feet. But on the other side, there are tons of people who don't deserve to be out of work, and who are going to be hurt by the companies failure much, much more than the people who are actually responsible. So I'm at a loss; I don't know what the right thing to do is.

But what I do know is that you can't have an honest discussion if you're starting it with a big ol' lie. And the $70/hour labor cost [taken by adding in the cost of pensions for already retired workers into the labor costs of their existing workforce] is a lie.