long Compost article about banality and stupidity of GM 4519

All I know about pension obligations and corporate management or mismanagement of them is that even attempting to get at the truth of what's in there amounts to a full employment program and an artesian well of frequent-flyer miles for bored MBAs looking for a consulting gig on the side, so I'll let that one alone.

I suspect that GM's much talked about healthcare costs are

(a) true of other large American manufacturers similarly affected by demographics; and (b) a symptom of an approach to healthcare that is pretty comprehensively broken.

That latter aspect is interesting because it makes comparison to foreign compebreastion complicated if not outright absurd.

You have to look at all the holdings of all the foreign and multinational compebreastors and figure out which parts have more or less full-ride socialized healthcare systems (most of the First World ones beyond the US, for sure), and which offer next to nothing except on a fee-for-service basis to the wealthy, and which are somewhere in between; and what if anything the compebreastor does to supplement this in each case.

Then to be fair you have to do the same thing for the foreign plants, joint ventures, and offshored vendors of the American corporation.

Then, after a great deal of legwork maybe you're *only* comparing apples to oranges.

Oh, yes, and start with getting both sides and a third-party analysis on every number provided by anybody with a vested interest.

Cheers, --Joe