So auditors are now reporting that GM’s long-term viability is, to put it charitably, a little bit doubtful. When this sort of language is going into GM’s annual report, then it is a virtual certainty that the depth of its problems are no doubt quite severe. Insofar as Citibank and BofA (and possibly all major American banks) are now zombie banks, it’s clear that GM that is a zombie manufacturer.
Let’s be clear: without single-payer health care, there’s no way it can survive. It would be both a contractual and moral travesty for GM to cut health benefits for retirees, which are a crushing burden on the company. The idea that private corporations should be responsible for providing public services is, when considered, somewhat strange. The logical evolution of it is something like GM, where the accumulation of time means that it eventually finds itself bearing huge non-productive costs.
This can be interpreted as the fault of unions who had the temerity to demand basic quality-of-life concessions. I think it makes more sense to interpret it as the fault of a state which outsourced public health to employers unwilling and unable to bear the cost.
