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What
Makes Europeans Competitive?
I
enjoyed your recent article, "No
More Nerdistans!" (November 25, 2002), and don't disagree with
any of your points. However, I would add that Europe,
and most every other First World
nation with which we are in competition, offers
another benefit to their businesses that we don't:
health insurance. In the
U.S.,
we expect that the costs of health benefits are to
be paid by employers. GM spends more money on health
care costs than on steel in the costs of producing a
new car in the U.S.
This burden reduces the competitiveness of US
businesses and increases the costs of labor.
I
won't discuss at this point the lack of coverage
that many self-employed, contract employees, and
wage earners experience except to note that for a
system that costs an awful amount of money, we don't
seem to be getting very good coverage. Call me a
socialist if you will, but I think that health care
costs, unemployment insurance, workman's
compensation, and the employer's share of Social
Security are all hidden taxes that should be removed
from the employer and provided for through general
revenues (mainly income tax). U.S.
businesses would be a whole lot more competitive in
the global market if those employer taxes were
shifted to general revenues.
Taylor
Jarnagin
Sterling
tjarnagin@erols.com
Response
from One of the “Petulant Few”
Who
Promoted the Sales Tax Referendum
Patrick McSweeney isn’t one I’d send to the
Middle
East
to make peace. I was a transportation
referendum supporter, and I’m still trying to make
sense out of the vote. McSweeny’s snide “I told
you so” (see Moving
Ahead on Transportation,
Nov.
18, 2002
) followed by a litany of empty generalities is not
helpful in figuring out what to do next. Has
anyone, anywhere in the
United
States
done anything large scale in
transportation infrastructure by private development
that has been financially successful?
If we are going to rely heavily on tolling or
“congestion pricing” why not go the whole way
and make as much government as possible “pay as
you go?” Apply that concept to education, law
enforcement, etc. Does government not have a
real role, and is transportation infrastructure not
part of it? If the tax payers don’t want to
pay for roads, federal or state, then let’s stop
the fiction of our bright economic future, shut down
all of VDOT except maintenance, try to keep the
roads we have in good repair, and let it go at that.
I particularly liked the recent suggestion to the
Virginian-Pilot letters to the editor that a
bicycler’s wind tunnel be built from
Virginia Beach
to the navy base in
Norfolk
,
and that bicyclers would be pushed from one end to
the other paying a toll for the privilege. At
least that idea was specific and can be assessed,
which makes it superior to McSweeney’s ramblings. The
sallies of this
Richmond
gadfly were not appreciated in Hampton Roads, even
by those who voted NO.
Terry
E. Riley
Executive
Director
Hampton
Roads Technology Council
riley@hrtc.org
Telework
a Marginal Contribution
to
Traffic Congestion
I’m sorry to be the source of bad news to those
touting telework as a contributor to a reduction in
road congestion (see Down
but Not Out,
Nov.
11, 2002
, among others) or a boon to the rural unemployed.
Telework does function well for “over the
transom” work where specifications are delivered
electronically, results are returned electronically,
and unsupervised workers are paid for output, not a
salary. Otherwise, not a single project in the
U.S.
over the past 10 years has demonstrated that
telework is as productive as conventional working at
the office.
The technology is quite good, mostly reliable, and
getting better all the time. The people factor
is the stumbling block. Companies don’t know
how to manage or monitor telework, and workers
haven’t figured out how to manage themselves.
Until we figure out the human factors of the
telework environment and properly assess the
productivity effects of face-to-face human
interaction in the office, telework will be nothing
more than experimental.
Terry
E. Riley
Executive
Director
Hampton
Roads Technology Council
riley@hrtc.org
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