Archive for November, 2007

I am among thousands of attorneys who believe unionization is the only way to change the unconscionable exploitation by the employment agencies and their law firm clients upon whom we depend for work. Some of us depend on this work because of the six figure law school debt incurred because the mid- and lower-rated law schools misrepresent both the employment opportunities and the income that can be earned in the market. As a result, the market is being flooded with graduates whose only employment opportunity is temporary work, namely, document review, offered through agencies which are widely suspected of engaging in a variety of illegal anti-worker practices.

Others of us are over 50 years old and out of work as the result of layoffs and downsizing. Because of our age, we are unemployable and depend on agencies for document review work. My experience demonstrates that age only adds to the extreme difficulty in obtaining even a temporary assignment — all of which, by the way, are low-paying and benefit-free.

Now, in addition to the foregoing, our cheap document review jobs (which the law firms are already marking up by 200+%) are being sent to India. As an attorney admitted in New York, I cannot even get a job in New Jersey — so how is it that my potential job can be sent to India? It is time to organize and stop this madness.

For those who don’t know, only a small fraction of attorneys earn the “big bucks.” The big money is “earned” (more accurately “made” or “stolen”) on Wall Street, not in the vast majority of law firms. The rest of us — 90% or so — are struggling just to keep our heads above water and maintain even one foot in the middle class, i.e, pay for the roof over our head and buy health insurance out of pocket. This situation is undoubtedly not confined to the legal sector and is unsustainable. It is time — past time — to organize, unionize, compel our bar associations to side with us, and put an end to this insanity.

I am a university researcher, but I have been a lifelong employee in nonprofit organizations. I am joining UP because I have seen the tentacles of corporatization and managerial dominance creep into organizations that should be free of those things. There is no reason for universities and nonprofits to constantly restructure, give their workers nonsense psychological “tests,” hire layers of bureaucracy, and drive down wages while promoting a select few. If nonprofits and education can’t stem the tide, we are done for.

“Harper’s Index”* for December, 2007, offers us this interesting combinations of statistical information:

Portion of all private insurance companies participating in Medicare that were audited in 2001 and 2006, respectively: 1/4, 1/7.
Number of the forty-nine companies audited in 2003 that were found to have made major errors: 41
Number of these companies that Medicare took any action against: 0

Chance that an American under the age of 65 went without health insurance at some point during the past two years: 1 in 3
Percentage change since 1990 in the number of pawn shops in New York City: +523

Percentage of U.S. CEOs who believed this spring that the economy was either “good” or “excellent”: 84
Percentage of Americans overall who believed this: 37

Percentage of Americans this year who say they are Democrat-leaning and Republican-leaning, respectively: 50, 36.
Number of years since this poll began in 1990 in which the gap favoring either party was so large: 0.

* Harper’s Magazine, December, 2007, p. 17. Available online here for Harper’s subscribers.

We at United Professionals are not trying to talk anyone into supporting a particular form of universal health care. Our objective is to bring information to your attention in hopes that the country can eventually agree on a more informed course of action. As a step in that direction, we will do whatever we can to set the record straight regarding the numerous scare tactics being used to confuse people about the issues. Here is some information you will find useful, written and compiled by UP board member Trude Diamond:

For each example of a “socialized medicine” scare tactic, real metrics provide rebuttal. The quoted material on each topic represents the central point of the entire article cited as it relates to the specific “scare” tactic, and may appear in the middle of the article, not the beginning.

If you have time only to read a few articles, these two are comprehensive. On the “scare tactic” side, Fractured Healthcare in The New American (January 8, 2007) by Jane Orient, M.D. demonstrates the considered viewpoint of a physician whose intellectual intent to provide the best possible patient care is overridden by a very human emotion, fear of change. On the “real statistics, real solutions’ side, The Health of Nations in The American Prospect (May 7, 2007) by Ezra Klein (a widely published researcher/writer on social issues) demonstrates the considered viewpoint of journalistic objectivity and acknowledges the admitted problems in Canada’s and the U.K.’s healthcare programs and the strengths of the healthcare policies in France and Germany.

Scare Tactic #1: Socialized medicine is far more expensive than the for-profit insurance system.

Scary articles:

As the expense of providing “free” health care erupts accordingly, the government tries to control costs by clamping down on the providers of health care. A massive net of regulations descends on doctors, nurses, insurers, and drug companies. As more of their endeavors are rendered unprofitable, drug companies produce fewer drugs, and insurers limit their policies or exit the industry. Entire article …

[regarding Senator Clinton's health plan] The so-called “individual mandate” - the centerpiece of her “American Health Choices Plan” - would cost the federal government $110 billion a year and would help provide coverage for 47 million Americans without health care coverage. It is similar to a proposal offered by rival John Edwards. Barack Obama’s health care plan does not have the same mandate. Entire article …

Reality-based Rebuttals:

A majority of Americans say the federal government should guarantee health insurance to every American, especially children, and are willing to pay higher taxes to do it, according to the latest New York Times/CBS News poll. Entire article

The Case For Single Payer, Universal Health Care For The United States - Fact One: The United States spends at least 40% more per capita on health care than any other industrialized country with universal health care. Fact Two: Federal studies by the Congressional Budget Office and the General Accounting office show that single payer universal health care would save 100 to 200 billion dollars per year despite covering all the uninsured and increasing health care benefits. Entire article …

Rather than cost more money, UHC would actually reduce the cost of health care. The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) estimated that UHC could save up to $14 billion annually by spreading the risk evenly over the entire population, eliminating deductibles and co-pays and making preventive medicine available to the poor and uninsured. The federal government already subsidizes private health insurance in the form of tax deductions. Private insurance companies also spend billions on administration and overhead, advertising, and determining and inspecting patient eligibility, all while trying to make a profit. UHC would not be burdened with some of those costs, like advertising, and unlike private business, it could run at a loss and still be viable. Entire article …

Socialized medicine is a system in which doctors and hospitals work for the government and draw salaries from the government. Doctors in the Veterans Administration and the Armed Services are paid this way. Examples also exist in Great Britain and Spain. But in most European countries, Canada, Australia and Japan they have socialized financing, or socialized health insurance, not socialized medicine. The government pays for care that is delivered in the private (mostly not-for-profit) sector. This is similar to how Medicare works in this country. … The difference, or the gap between current public funding and what we would need for a universal health care system, would be financed by a payroll tax on employers (about 7%) and an income tax on individuals (about 2%). The payroll tax would replace all other employer expenses for employees’ health care. The income tax would take the place of all current insurance premiums, co-pays, deductibles, and any and all other out of pocket payments. Entire articles on “socialized health insurance” and taxation …

Newer analyses of these factors put the public financing estimate at 60%, out-of-pocket at 17% (for uncovered services, premiums not paid for by an employer) and employers’ contributions at 19%. Entire article on public financing ratio …

… the United States has opted for a makeshift system of increasing complexity and dysfunction. Americans spend $5,267 per capita on health care every year, almost two and half times the industrialized world’s median of $2,193; the extra spending comes to hundreds of billions of dollars a year. What does that extra spending buy us? Americans have fewer doctors per capita than most Western countries. We go to the doctor less than people in other Western countries. We get admitted to the hospital less frequently than people in other Western countries. We are less satisfied with our health care than our counterparts in other countries. American life expectancy is lower than the Western average. Childhood-immunization rates in the United States are lower than average. Infant-mortality rates are in the nineteenth percentile of industrialized nations. Doctors here perform more high-end medical procedures, such as coronary angioplasties, than in other countries, but most of the wealthier Western countries have more CT scanners than the United States does, and Switzerland, Japan, Austria, and Finland all have more MRI machines per capita. Nor is our system more efficient. The United States spends more than a thousand dollars per capita per year–or close to four hundred billion dollars–on health-care-related paperwork and administration, whereas Canada, for example, spends only about three hundred dollars per capita. And, of course, every other country in the industrialized world insures all its citizens; despite those extra hundreds of billions of dollars we spend each year, we leave forty-five million people without any insurance. A country that displays an almost ruthless commitment to efficiency and performance in every aspect of its economy-a country that switched to Japanese cars the moment they were more reliable, and to Chinese T-shirts the moment they were five cents cheaper–has loyally stuck with a health-care system that leaves its citizenry pulling out their teeth with pliers. Entire article …

Our health-care system has continued to deteriorate. We spend twice as much as the French and the Germans and two and a half times as much as the Brits, yet we die sooner and our babies die in greater numbers. Thirty-eight million Americans were uninsured in 2000; now it’s forty-seven million. Employer-based health insurance is increasingly expensive, stingy, and iffy. Companies, especially manufacturing companies, are beginning to realize that being deputized to pay the health-care costs of their employees and retirees puts them at a competitive disadvantage in the global economy. Entire article …

Scare Tactic #2: You have to wait months for an appointment with a doctor.

Scary Article:

The quality of care [in Canada] is not as good as that provided in the United States because patients often cannot receive needed treatments for months and are criminalized if they try to pay privately for services that are provided by the government-run health care system. Entire article …

Reality-based Rebuttal:

The existence of long wait times is itself an almost entirely false assertion. Canadians have no waits for emergency care, and queues for elective tests and procedures (contrary to spurious figures reported by ideologically-oriented institutions) are quite short when measured scientifically. Entire article …
Scare Tactic #3: Universal health systems are more bureaucratic and less responsive to people’s needs than the current system.

Scary Article:

“Socialized Medicine is not the Answer”: In an effort to avoid a two-tiered health care system where wealthy people can get health care but the poor can’t, Canada has solved the problem admirably: dogs can get health care but people can’t, according to Charles Jarvis, Chairman and Chief Executive of United Seniors Association. … Canada’s health care system is deficient … The quality of care is not as good as that provided in the United States because patients often cannot receive needed treatments for months and are criminalized if they try to pay privately for services that are provided by the government-run health care system. Entire article …

Reality-based Rebuttals:

U.S. health care puts profits over people. Businesses, families, workers and people of all ages are finding U.S. health care too expensive and unresponsive to their needs. Entire article …

[Current U.S. health care system data from The RAND Corporation, a nonprofit research organization providing objective analysis and effective solutions. Section headings:] Overall, About One-Half of Recommended Care Is Received; Women Are Less Likely to Get Effective Drug Therapies for Heart Attacks; African Americans Are Less Likely to Have Access to Kidney Transplants; Minority Patients Are Less Likely to Receive Adequate Cancer Pain Management; Medicare Beneficiaries Report Least Problems with Receiving Timely Care; Medicare Beneficiaries Give Their Personal Physicians High Ratings for Communication; Medicare Beneficiaries Rate Their Overall Health Care Higher Entire document … (This Acrobat file is 83 pages and may download slowly.)

Scare Tactic #4: Universal healthcare systems reduce the level of care for everyone to the “lowest common denominator.”

Scary Articles:

Fractured Healthcare: Americans Are Told That We Need “Universal Healthcare,” but That Would Be Disastrous. Reforming Health Insurance, However, Would Begin to Resolve Our Medical Problems. By listening carefully to the proponents of universal care, it becomes clear that “universal healthcare” is code for “uniform healthcare,” not “optimum care of the sick.” Proponents say that we need to accomplish “fairness” and to eliminate “healthcare disparities.” In fact, this is a very popular topic in establishment-approved medical journals such as JAMA, the American Medical Association’s journal. To ensure fairness, we are told, we need to “weed out” doctors who deviate from the “standard of care.” The harsh penalties to be meted out against doctors who don’t follow to the letter government directions for care should clue us as to the rigid system that is being proposed and the type of care we can expect: any care that bureaucrats feel is financially worthwhile and “equitable.” Entire article …

Reality-based Rebuttals:

The Health of Nations: Here’s How Canada, France, Britain, Germany, and Our Own Veterans Health Administration Manage to Cover Everybody at Less Cost and with Better Care Than We Do. Medicine may be hard, but health insurance is simple. The rest of the world’s industrialized nations have already figured it out, and done so without leaving 45 million of their countrymen uninsured and 16 million or so underinsured, and without letting costs spiral into the stratosphere and severely threaten their national economies. Even better, these successes are not secret, and the mechanisms not unknown. Ask health researchers what should be done, and they will sigh and suggest something akin to what France or Germany does. Ask them what they think can be done, and their desperation to evade the opposition of the insurance industry and the pharmaceutical industry and conservatives and manufacturers and all the rest will leave them stammering out buzzwords and workarounds, regional purchasing alliances and health savings accounts. The subject’s famed complexity is a function of the forces protecting the status quo, not the issue itself. Entire article …

[In 2002, Canada issued a report on its national healthcare system, noting areas needing improvement, including:] “a Need to Introduce Incentives for all Participants in the Publicly Funded Hospital and Doctor System ” while also proposing “Principles to Guide the Restructuring and Financing of Canada’s Health Care System” and finding that, while frankly addressing the need for restructuring, ” Canadians Want a Strong Role for the Federal Government in Facilitating Health Care Restructuring and Renewal.” Entire document …

[In 2007, Canada's healthcare system continues to evolve, while measuring and reporting objectively upon its continuing concerns as well as improvements. The Canadian Institute for Health Information provides detailed statistical analyses:] Entire document … (This Acrobat file is 67 pages and may download slowly.)

Scare Tactic #5: When there’s a government-managed healthcare system, private care is difficult to find even when you can afford it, and it’s a crime in Canada.

Scary Articles:

The quality of care [in Canada] is not as good as that provided in the United States because patients often cannot receive needed treatments for months and are criminalized if they try to pay privately for services that are provided by the government-run health care system. Entire article …

Reality-based Rebuttal - for Canada:

Accepting money from patients for operations they would otherwise receive free of charge in a public hospital is technically prohibited in [Canada], even in cases where patients would wait months or even years in discomfort before receiving treatment. But no one is about to arrest Dr. Brian Day, who is president and medical director of the center, or any of the 120 doctors who work there. Public hospitals are sending him growing numbers of patients they are too busy to treat, and his center is advertising that patients do not have to wait to replace their aching knees. The country’s publicly financed health insurance system - frequently described as the third rail of its political system and a core value of its national identity - is gradually breaking down. Private clinics are opening around the country by an estimated one a week, and private insurance companies are about to find a gold mine. Entire article …

Reality-based Rebuttal - for the U.K. and other European nations:

Private Healthcare UK has a ‘find a doctor’ facility to search the private doctors and specialists databases of some of the leading UK private hospital organisations. Specialist Info Details on over 26,000 UK Consultants, including their special interests, specialty, hospitals (with maps), clinic times, and contact details. The site is indexed by name, geographic region, specialty and special interests making it easy to use. The site also includes details of over 34,000 GPs indexed by name, practice name, town and postcode for easy access. Entire Patient UK/Find me a [type of private doctor] page …

A mix of public and private providers of health care services and health-care facilities is an accepted reality …. Patients can generally choose whether to receive health services from a public or private provider, including which hospital they wish to use and are insured in either venue for medically necessary services. Entire article …

Scare Tactic #6: Creating a federal government-managed universal healthcare system will destroy the entire insurance industry, putting millions of its employees out of work.

Scary Article:

Senate Republican Whip Sen. Trent Lott, R- Miss., said, ” If people want socialism, if they want the federal government to pay for all of our health care needs, let’s just go ahead and become a socialist government.” Entire article …

Reality-based Rebuttals:

[Even at the Heritage Foundation, a self-defined conservative think tank, at least one expert considers the Federal Employees Health Benefits Program a model for universal insurance, preferable to state-based health insurance exchange plans:] The FEHBP … is an institutional reality: It is the largest group health insurance system in the world. The purpose of the FEHBP, established in 1960, was to provide federal employees and retirees with a choice of competitive private health plans through their place of work. It is part of the federal compensation package, designed to attract and retain federal workers. … Moving from a defined-benefit to a defined-contribution system makes sense for employers and employees. Employees should be able to secure the full economic benefit of choosing less expensive insurance coverage, if they wish to do so, in return for higher wages or other compensation. A free market rewards rational choices and lets consumers get the best value for their money. Regulation should be light. One of the oddest features of the FEHBP is that, despite its millions of enrollees and the fact that it is a government program, it is managed by a staff of less than 200 employees and governed by light and rational government regulation. OPM’s own administrative cost is small, comprising less than 1 percent of the “aggregate cost” of health plan premiums. Entire article …

Many of these displaced [insurance company] workers might be deployed as support personnel to free up nurses for clinical tasks; other might be retrained to staff expanded programs in public health, home care, and the like. Entire article …

We at United Professionals waited quite anxiously for the details of Senator Hillary Clinton’s health care coverage proposals. When they finally arrived, we were disappointed — we had high hopes because she clearly has the capacity to understand the issues and the compassion to identify with those in need.

Here is our take on the issue of healthcare reform and the candidates’ plans in general: None of the proposals advanced so far resolve the problems that come with an employer-paid system of access to health insurance. You would still need a full-time job to get affordable coverage. Proposals that do not solve that problem do not, in fact, solve the problem of an affordable healthcare program — even though every industrialized nation in the world has managed the issue.

People with part-time jobs, no jobs, and the self-employed will still not have equal access to the system because they often cannot afford coverage — they will not belong to a risk pool that allows the cost of getting sick to be spread across a healthier/more cheaply covered population. And people with pre-existing conditions are unable to get coverage at all.

We wanted to give you our take on the issues and simultaneously start giving you plenty of information so you can make up your own minds. Therefore, we have included links to what the candidates and others are saying about healthcare. Try to ignore their rhetoric and pay close attention to whether they really address the problem: we have a system that keeps coverage from people when they need it most and makes coverage easy to get when needed least.

We have got to find a better way, but none of the proposals we have seen so far do that. Barbara Ehrenreich, Founder and Board Member, United Professionals

Links to Candidates’ Healthcare Plans:

Hillary Clinton: http://www.hillaryclinton.com/feature/healthcareplan/?sc=8

Barack Obama: http://www.barackobama.com/pdf/HealthPlanOverview.pdf

John Edwards: http://johnedwards.com/about/issues/health-care-overview.pdf

Mitt Romney: http://www.mittromney.com/Issue-Watch/Health_Care

Rudy Giuliani: http://www.joinrudy2008.com/commitment.php?num=7

Fred Thompson: http://www.fred08.com/Principles/PrinciplesSummary.aspx?View=OnTheIssues

John McCain: http://www.johnmccain.com

Dennis Kucinich:

http://www.dennis4president.com/go/issues/a-healthy-nation/

 Bill Richardson:

http://www.richardsonforpresident.com/issues/healthcare

 As a nonprofit organization, UP cannot legally endorse any candidate or legislation.

[Ed. note:   We inadvertantly left of the links for Dennis Kucinich and Bill Richardson.  Thanks to the observant supporters who pointed out our error!]

Dear Ms. Ehrenreich,

After reading your superb book Bait and Switch, I am inspired to add my
experiences to the pool of knowledge of the job-seeking professional.

In March 2001 I was a telecommunications engineer who began looking for a
promotion to the research end of a large telecommunications company. When I was
passed over a couple of times, I began to notice the gathering clouds of
layoffs. By midyear, the bloodletting had begun; at first I wasn’t alarmed, it
was just the temporary, interns and contractors. When the reaper reached into
the engineering ranks I was among the victims. Unfazed, I thought I could fall
back on my experience as a defense contractor engineer. Eventually, I learned
that without a current security clearance I was wasting my time. I then expanded
the scope of my job search to include 7-11 and Wendy’s. They didn’t want to talk
to me.  Later, I learned from a job placement specialist that people like me
(high tech workers) were known in the industry as flight risks. We were seen as
likely to leave as soon as the job market turned around in a couple of months
and the managers would then have to start the hiring process all over again.

I endured two years of unemployment; living on my wife’s paycheck. We lost the
house and belatedly filed for bankruptcy. Belatedly, because I naively thought
that a job was just around the corner. Eventually through the kindness of my
daughter’s principal, I got a job as a kindergarten teacher’s assistant. Three
years into that gig I decided that I wanted to teach Mathematics. So I joined a
teacher training program and got a teaching job at a local High school. Eight
months later I learned that my position was eliminated (budget cutbacks in the
Math department?); so I spent the summer trying to get another job for the fall.
It was all to no avail, in spite of everyone telling me that schools were
desperate for math teachers.  I guess they weren’t that desperate. Backing off
teaching proper, I tried to become a substitute teacher. As it turns out it took
at least four months to have your application processed and then at least
another month and a half to begin apply for jobs.  I became disillusioned with
teaching, not the mechanics of it, just the bureaucracy end of it.

The wind up of this letter is that I’ve decided to quit banging my head on the
corporate door and start my own business selling math-themed t-shirts.  After
all, I don’t have anything to lose, not my pension, not my retirement, not my
savings, not my career, not my job; just my chains! In fact I feel a memoir
coming on.

Thanks for telling the story of those who don’t have a right to complain because
as an educated professional “You don’t need any help looking for work.”

Sincerely,

Jon Bellamy

               In solidarity with the striking screenwriters there will be no laugh lines in this blog, no stunning metaphors, and not many adjectives. Also, in solidarity with the striking Broadway stage-hands, no theatrics, special effects or sing-along refrains.

            Yes, I realize the strike could deprive millions of Americans of news as Jay Leno, Jon Stewart, and the rest of them are forced into re-runs. If the strike and the re-runs go on long enough, the same millions of Americans will be condemned to living in the past and writing in Kerry for president in 08. But are re-runs really such a bad thing? After opening night, every Broadway show is a re-run in perpetuity, yet people have been known to fly from Fargo to see “Mamma Mia.”

And yes, it’s a crying shame that so many laugh-worthy news items will go unnoted on the late night talk shows:  The discovery of Chinese toys coated with the date rape drug. The news that pot-smoking Swiss teenagers are as academically successful as abstainers and better socially adjusted. Bush’s repeated requests for Musharraf to take off his uniform. Could there be a simple explanation for the powerful affinity between these two men?

True, a screenwriters’ strike is not as emotionally compelling as a strike by janitors or farm-workers. Screenwriters are often well-paid – when they are paid. All it takes is for a show to get cancelled or reconceptualized, and they’re back on the streets again, hustling for work. I know a couple of them – smart, funny women who clamber nimbly from one short-lived job to another, struggling to keep up their health insurance and self-respect.

But my selfish hope here is that the screenwriters’ action will call attention to the plight of writers in general. Since I started in the freelancing business about 30 years ago, the per-word payment for print articles has remained exactly the same in actual, non-inflation-adjusted, dollars. Three dollars a word was pretty much top of the line, and it hasn’t gone up by a penny. More commonly in the old days, I made a dollar a word, requiring me to write three or four 1000-word pieces a month to supply the children with their bagels and pizza. One for Mademoiselle on “The Heartbreak Diet.” One for Ms. on “The Bright Side of the Man Shortage.” One for Mother Jones on pharmaceutical sales scams, and probably a book review thrown in.

There was a perk, of course – the occasional free lunch on an editor’s expense account. These would occur in up-market restaurants where the price of lunch for two would easily exceed my family’s weekly food budget, but I realized it would be gauche to bring a plastic baggie for the rolls. My job was to pitch story ideas over the field greens and tuna tartare, all the while marveling at the wealth that my writing helped generate, which, except for the food on my plate, went largely to someone other than me.

For print writers, things have gone steadily downhill. The number of traditional outlets—magazines and newspapers – is shrinking. Ms., for example, publishes only quarterly now, Mother Jones every two months, and Mademoiselle has long since said au revoir. You can blog on the Web of course, but that pays exactly zero. As for benefits: once the National Writers’ Union offered health insurance, but Aetna dropped it and then Unicare found writers too sickly to cover. (You can still find health insurance, however, at www.freelancersunion.org.)

So, you may be thinking, who needs writers anyway? The truth is, no one needs any particular writer, just as no one needs any particular auto worker, stage-hand, or janitor. But take us all away and TV’s funny men will be struck mute, soap opera actors will be reduced to sighing and grunting, CNN anchors will have to fill the whole hour with chit chat about the weather, all greeting cards will be blank. Newspapers will consist of advertisements and movie listings; the Web will collapse into YouTube. A sad, bewildered, silence will come over the land.

Besides, anyone who’s willing to stand up to greedy bosses deserves our support. A victory for one group, from Ford workers to stage-hands, raises the prospects for everyone else. Who knows? If the screenwriters win, maybe some tiny measure of respect will eventually trickle down even to bloggers. So in further solidarity with striking writers, I’m going to shut up right now.

Between the 1970s and the millennium, the United States federal government forgot whom it was of, by and for. Instead of serving the citizen electorate, legislators have been the lackeys of the corporate “protectorate” with the loudest lobbies.

Surveys have shown that we know it. In 1964, only 29 percent of us believed that big, self-interested companies had major influence over our government. More than 60 percent of us held that cynical belief in 2000. Today, with reports that indicate our internal “axis of evil” consists of the unholy triumvirate of big finance (insurance and banking), big pharma and big oil, I’d guess that even more of us are true cynics than true believers in government of, by and for us.

I remember one of my former employer’s Human Resources department acting on principles of nurturing the company’s “human capital.” The company (in the Fortune 5 of its industry) thrived, grew, had zero debt and benefited from high creativity by its employees driving both product innovation and internal efficiency. In the 1990’s, consolidations began in that industry. The HR department ran conscientious outplacement programs to support the job transition of employees in downsized departments. Until 1993, outplacement assistance included job-search counseling and retraining. Then outplacement programs disappeared. Meanwhile, the layoffs and outsourcing have done nothing but increase. I escaped to a more nimble and forward-thinking industry. Today, no HR professional I know manages any program truly meant to benefit the company by protecting its investment in its human capital. The era of the corporate good citizen is over.

In Robert Reich’s latest book, Supercapitalism (see interview and review links below), you can find a thorough and readable analysis of the imbalance between our capitalist economy and the representative government that’s supposed to be “ours.” Since the 1970’s, as our instincts have told us all along, our economy as shifted. As competition has increased and been met with consolidations, the balancing institutions—labor unions, legislatures responsive to Main Street instead of Wall Street, and regulatory agencies—have declined. Wealth has increased, but narrowed instead of spread. It sure hasn’t trickled down.

As consumers we benefit from the market competition and technology, but as employees—and as citizens—we suffer. The Web lets us find the best bargains, so manufacturers are pressed to give us the most products at the lowest prices, and we end up with lead paint on our kids’ toys. That’s the only metaphor we really need to see the overall trend, isn’t it?

The Web also lets us express our demands to our legislators. What do we want? We want them to do the jobs we elected them for, not what industry lobbyists buy their agreement to do.

Right now, our federal legislators are distracted by a war founded in fraudulent claims, and funded by our tax dollars in a manner than enriches a few contracting companies while impoverishing our national infrastructure. We need to re-focus the legislators on the part of their job that involves the nation’s well-being – sound roads, good public schools, protection for employee unions, and a social safety-net for displaced workers. (Oh, and anti-terrorist security measures that really work, don’t just distract those of us boarding the planes from the absence of inspection down in the freight bays.) That social safety-net, in today’s and the future’s economic reality, must include a national healthcare program unrelated to one’s employment. And grants for skill upgrading and retraining would help keep us professionals “professional” in jobs that actually exist here.

Bottom line, as corporations think of it, it’s time for our government to be our government again. Our elected legislators must do the hard work of traditional “homeland security,” using the Fed’s regulatory power to maintain a balance between a healthy capitalism and robust societal institutions. We elect representatives to represent us – society’s best interests, regardless of the agendas of the industries with the highest war-chest contributions, the best lobby-treats, and the most persuasive B2C advertising (or stealthy product placement) campaigns.

We are not persuaded. We do expect our government to use its regulatory powers to regulate industries that have consolidated into near-monopolies, and dumped truly productive American professionals out of offices into the day labor pool, while creating billionaire hedge-fund managers who produced nothing but houses of cards that are about to collapse along with the housing mortgage market that’s not such a solid a hedge after all.

Let capitalism be capitalism. Let democracy be democracy. Our legislators’ job is to maintain balance for the citizens, the electorate who put them there. Let’s be our own lobby and remind them who their boss really is.

You can read a transcript of Reich’s MSNBC/Newsweek interview about Supercapitalism, or Forbes’ book review . Or both – in the name of fairness and balance.