Reply #51: Besides corporate greed in the phama/insurance industries, globalization is behind demise

[EVDebs]

The Benefits Trap
http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/04_29/b3892001_mz001.htm

makes it clear, companies are stripping workers in the US of pensions and healthcare benefits in order to 'compete' with their overseas counterpart subsidiaries

"" Perhaps most important, in the global economy, long-established U.S. companies are competing against younger rivals here and abroad that pay little or nothing toward their workers' retirement, giving the older companies a huge incentive to dump their plans. ""

This is all symptomatic of an overall 'race to the bottom' (as Alan Tonelson calls it) and another sign that the consolidation of wealth in the US with the upper 1 and 1/2 percent of the wealthy is ruining this once great nation.