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Strategies & Market Trends : The Epic American Credit and Bond Bubble Laboratory -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: GraceZ who wrote (51830)	1/27/2006 9:25:38 PM
From: mishedlo	Read Replies (7) \| Respond to of 110194

Ever since the government passed WWII wage freezes, companies have offered compensation in the form of untaxed benefits to attract workers and labor groups have demanded expansion of these benefits. There has been some back off in those gains in the last few years but almost every single large labor negociation has pivoted on non-cash compensation in the last 20 years simply because in an environment with such high employment taxes, non-cash compensation is worth a lot more to employees than it costs employers. Grace please be serious. Companies are slashing benefits and raising co-pays and deductables. IBM and verison just froze pension plans. People dumped into PBGC via bankruptcy find out that their pension is lowered and medical promises totally wiped out. Walmart is going more to part time work simply to avoid full time benefits. Note: I am not blaming Walmart I am merely stating the truth. You really have to have your head in the sand to think that benefits are rising. Furthermore some of this "productivity" is employees working 55 hours a week and getting paid for 40 of them. That is a huge reduction in not only benefits but pay. Employees are squeezed more and more and more for time via cell phones, after hours support, rotating weekends, and other stuff, every bit of it unpaid hours worked. When is the last time you had a freaking clue about what is happening in the real world vs what you see as the owner of a small business? Mish

To: GraceZ who wrote (51830)	1/28/2006 1:59:59 AM
From: Mike Johnston	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 110194

What non cash compensation ? Health insurance ? Companies were forced to spend more money on health benefits because of high levels of inflation in health care. That has led to a big pressure to cut benefit costs like cutting coverage or increasing copays or decreasing the quality of coverage. Now you don't like BLS data because it doesn't conform to your perception of reality ? 4% drop in real wages is horrific. But if true rate of inflation were used for calculation, those numbers would look even worse. You really are confused.