Can we please stop exaggerating UAW wages?

I keep seeing everywhere — JammieWearingFool is just the latest place — that United Auto Workers members earn $73 per hour when you include their benefits, and its driving me nuts, because I know that figure includes future health care and pension benefits. Even if the figure is technically an accurate calculation when taking lifetime benefits into account, it’s misleading to throw that figure out there.

Not everyone intends to mislead with this figure, of course (including JWF, I’m sure — I like the bloggers over there, pretty much). Some are just repeating the error after reading it elsewhere. But I can’t help but think that some folks are intentionally throwing it out there with the hope that those who hear it will forget the “including future benefits” part and maybe forget the “including benefits” part entirely, and thus walk away thinking that a UAW worker is making over $150k a year after overtime.

This is not a good practice, and not just because it is misleading.

First, it is the same type of “class warfare” rhetoric that conservatives routinely condemn when liberals wage it by talking about “taxing the rich” or “the gap between rich and poor.” The people engaged in deliberate deception are effectively identifying the UAW members as “the rich” when compared to many other hard-working Americans. And they explicitly condemn the gap between the “hourly wage, including benefits” of auto workers in the big three and tose working for Japanese companies. How is that any different than exploiting the gap between rich and poor? (Well, it is a little different, and I’ll get to that below.) The intent here is to demonize the UAW worker as someone making more than he should and to remind other Americans that they don’t have it as good.

Second, this $73/hr claim gives the left fodder for calling conservatives dishonest. This will undermine all of the good arguments that can be made against the bailout.

Third, it’s unnecessary. Wouldn’t it be wiser to argue in terms that are accurate (and therefore can’t be called dishonest)? My goodness, if you can’t make the case against Joe Six-Pack having to pay taxes so some guy can keep earning twice the hourly wage he does, plus a lifetime pension Joe Six-Pack doesn’t get, plus lifetime healthcare coverage Joe Six-Pack doesn’t get — and instead have to rely on the dishonest $73 per hour “earning” figure — then you’ve got no business making your case to anyone.

By the way, is this argument a form of “class warfare,” and aren’t conservatives supposed to be against class warfare? Well, yeah. But I’ll cut conservatives some slack, here, as the difference is that taxpayers are being asked to keep this system alive.

The correct way to present this figure is not as a UAW member’s wage, but as the hourly cost to the company per worker. That is consistent with how it is usually reported for other folks, and it is perfectly honest, because costs are understood to include all costs of employment, including future costs for current employees.

Oh, yeah. The latest news, which Michelle Malkin is quite happy about, is that the auto company bailout has died in the Senate . . . at least until next year.