The Economic Policy Institute has this sobering little snapshot of where all our money’s gone in the past eight years.
I gather that they’d like the reader to be shocked that health care costs have actually risen more than energy costs. I’m not.
But put the two together, and it’s a pretty stark look at why disposable income is little more than a fond memory for most of us.
An interesting thing happened on the picket line at Boeing Wichita this week.
One of the strikers I interviewed about the work stoppage talked for a while on his views and gave me his name. Nothing unusual there. But it turns out, he didn’t give me his name at all. He gave me the name of a Boeing supervisor. Imagine the supervisor’s surprise to see his name in the paper with comments that didn’t come from him. The Eagle ran a correction today.
It seems, though, that I’m not alone. The same thing happened to one of the TV stations over the weekend, a Boeing spokesman told me. Like me, the striker gave the TV reporter the name of his supervisor instead of his own. Come on. A little honesty, folks. It’s important for the public to hear from the union why they’re out there walking the picket lines. Strikers complain that the public sees them only as greedy Boeing workers. They can’t counter that if they don’t say why they’re walking the line. As in most things, the actions of a few give everyone a black eye.
Those wellness programs you’ve been on the fence about? Turns out they just may save you money.
A new study published in the September Journal of Occupational and Environmental Medicine reports that a program to reduce weight and improve health risk factors in obese employees produced a short-term return on investment of $1.17 per dollar spent.
In this case, a group of 890 overweight and obese employees from various companies were studied as they used a program called Healthyroads, which costs an average of $300 a year per employee. The study found for each dollar spent on the obesity management program, costs decreased by $1.17.
So where was the money saved? Mostly reduced health care spending, but also better productivity:
To assess the financial impact of the program, the researchers used a recently developed ROI model, which estimated the changes in medical costs and worker productivity resulting from reductions in health risks. The results suggested a total projected savings of nearly $312,000. About 60 percent of the savings resulted from reduced health care spending; the remaining 40 percent resulted from improvements in productivity.
If that’s not an argument for the effectiveness of workplace wellness programs, I don’t know what is.
Here’s a shock: A public/private report fingers speculators as the culprit for the run-up in oil prices.
Interestingly, oil’s only up about 75 cents a barrel as of this writing in the wake of OPEC’s 500,000-barrel production cut. And that’s even with Hurricane Ike bearing down on the oil production region of the Gulf.
Interesting, isn’t it?