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Letters: Labor, Anthem, flying, job costs
Letters in a computer with red mailbox flag
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TEXT OF STORY
Kai Ryssdal: We start our letters segment today with unemployment. Not people who are actually jobless, but with a group that until not too long ago was left out of the conversation about the labor market. The underemployed, people who have been laid off and can now only find part-time jobs, or fewer hours for less money.
Pam Gilchrist from Cincinnati, Ohio knows that topic all too well.
PAM Gilchrist: My husband was laid off last spring, and it took him six or eight months to find a new position, and the new position that he found pays about 50 percent less than it did previously, so he's regressed back to a salary that he made 10 years ago.
Robert Reich brought a personal angle to his commentary last week on health insurance. He was talking about Anthem's proposed 39 percent rate increase for individual policy holders. Bob is an Anthem customer. And he pointed out that Anthem said it has no choice but to raise prices because so many people have dropped their coverage because they can't afford it.
That's the part that made Joey Iverson, from St. Paul, Minn., say hmmm...
JOEY IVERSON: Anthem claims they're raising costs in part because nobody can afford their insurance anymore. Think on that.
Rico Gagliano did some thinkin' last week on airlines, and how they're charging for every little thing nowadays, including, most recently, American Airlines wanting eight bucks for a pillow and blanket.
RICO GAGLIANO: In a few minutes we'll be cutting off the supply of oxygen in the economy cabin. Additional oxygen can be purchased for a nickel per minute, just slip your coins into the slot in the armrest.
Tom Suggs from Lexington, Ky., says there is one more thing that they could charge for.
TOM SUGGS: About the only thing Mr. Gagliano left off was the take-off fee. Just because the airlines can't leave people on the tarmac for more than a few hours doesn't mean they can't charge for a timely departure.
Believe me when I tell you that that skit really struck a chord. Easily the most commented upon thing we've done the past couple of weeks.
Finally, an object lesson in the perils of covering the American economy. A couple of Fridays ago, Felix Salmon, one of the regulars in our Weekly Wrap, said this as a part of a conversation about how the president can create new jobs.
FELIX SALMON: Of course, infrastructure investment is extremely expensive way of creating jobs. It costs a good $200,000 per job.
Couple of days later we got a letter from a listener, someone who's been on the show a couple of times, actually. Representative Peter DeFazio, Democrat of Oregon.
The congressman took issue with Felix's $200,000 a job figure. He says the number's really closer to $92,000 a job. That's according to the President's Council of Economic Advisors, Mr. DeFazio told us. Felix got his estimate from a private consulting firm, called Economic Modeling Specialists, Incorporated.
So, what is the object lesson here? That what you believe about business and the economy depends in very great measure on who you talk to and what economists you read. That is why we've put links to the studies and economic models both Felix and Congressman DeFazio quoted on our Web site, so you can have a look and maybe decide for yourselves.
http://childwild.com/2010/02/15/us-airways-hates-families-and-kids/
http://childwild.com/2010/02/17/us-airways-polite-still-not-helpful/
Experiences of a friend who is a Mom, flying from Boston to AZ to see grandparents. My letter to US Airways:
Dear US Airways,
From what I hear in the media, the airlines are struggling to make ends meet. I also presume that their preferred customers are business travellers, not mothers flying with two toddlers to visit grandparents.
Let me say, that for the sake of your floundering airline, and for the sake of the business traveler, you need to get this right. You cannot ignore the need for a policy, and a system, to easily seat the passenger traveling with children. To leave this issue to be resolved after everyone gets seated puts the passenger, like me, in an uncomfortable position. Imagine the business traveler who cannot get a seat in first class or business class just because these rows are already full of your preferred customers. He sits in coach, disappointed, but comfortable in his window seat. He finds himself seated in row 26 next to a two year old whose mother is seated in row 5. The mom wants to switch, and he actually prefers to be near the front of the plane, but gosh darn it, it's a seat in the middle. For a seven-hour flight. AND the seats are so miniscule that he knows he'll be uncomfortable.
But it's a toddler. A toddler next to him, screaming his or her head off. Clearly, he doesn't want to be a jerk, and clearly he doesn't want to sit next to the toddler. So he agrees to switch. And decides, given the way it was handled by the airline when he reserved his seat, and by the flight attendant at the scene, never to fly US Airways again, because he realizes that the mom was not allowed by the airline to reserve seats for the family together.
I don't understand the complaining about airlines. Compare ticket prices today to 30 years ago than do the same for housing or cars or health insurance. I can still buy a roundtrip ticket for 150 dollars. Try buying a car for $6,000.
Bring a sweater to wear. Everyone complains about the food, so if they charge for it maybe you'd appreciate it more. Recently I sat next to 2 young ladies who ordered vegetarian meals they never even bothered to open!
When commenting on the perils of covering the American economy, Kai mentioned that Felix Salmon got his figures from private consulting firm Economic Modeling Specialists, Incorporated. Since I was listening with half an ear, I heard this as "Economic Muddling Specialists". It probably says something my faith in economists that it took several seconds for me to realize that I must have misunderstood.
