I’m sorry, Evil Captor…I quoted the wrong person…it was Brain Glutton who said this, not you…
(But I still didn’t make up other peoples’ arguments…the arguments seem quite clear without any help from me.)
Brainglutton, before we get too far off track, what do you think of the NDP’s performance in Ontario, and why do you think their programs went off the rails so badly? Hell, Bob Rae is the perfect modern socialist. Mild mannered, honestly wants what’s best for the people, worked within a democratic framework, highly educated Rhodes Scholar, packed his cabinet with intellectuals who ‘knew how not to repeat the mistakes of the past’.
How come in practice his policies wound up being so predictably wrong, following the pattern of other socialists who have tried to reshape the market to fit their ideas of social justice?
I don’t suppose you’d even entertain the notion that rent controls don’t work, that providing subsidized housing has unintended consequences, that putting onerous taxes on businesses restricts growth and causes capital flight, and that guaranteeing jobs leads to people who don’t work very hard in their job and don’t much care if their employer likes what they are doing?
The problem with Socialists is that they see cause and effect through an ideological filter that blinds them to reality. If there are rich and poor, it can’t be because the rich people worked harder, saved more, or found ways to be more productive. It’s got to be some malevolent force at play that an enlightened government can control. If they see workers making what they consider to be too low a wage, it can’t be because they aren’t productive enough to earn more - it’s got to be seen through the filter of the dialectic - the eternal class struggle between the haves and the have nots, the weak and the powerful. Just the kind of problem that a strong leader with a heart of gold and an army can fix.
By refusing to see the economic reality of the status quo, the true reason why things are the way they are, they are doomed to repeat the same mistakes over and over again. When Hugo Chavez claims that he’s going to take the banks back from the rich people because they are parasites who simply take from the system instead of adding value to it, he’s making the same mistake the Bolsheviks made when they hung all the Kulaks and turned agriculture over to ‘the people’ - with disastrous consequences.
When they think that true socialism is compatible with human rights, they’re projecting the world as they want it to be - not the world as it is. Markets are the way they are by and large because they represent the choices that people have freely made about how to work, spend, and invest their money and labor. When a third party with guns steps into the fray and starts ordering people around, it is intrinsically authoritarian. We don’t all live in a big collective farm where everyone has the same goals and the same notions about what is fair or unfair. The market lets them sort this out peacefully and voluntarily. Take it away, and people will try to get around it. Then you’ll need more laws, and more enforcement. Those laws in turn distort other things and cause further disruption, which requires yet more laws.
Let’s look at the case of rent control in Ontario (or New York, or anywhere else you want to look). The government stepped in between landlords and tenants and issued a decree about how much landlords could charge for rent increases. The unintended consequence was that building rental units was less profitable, so fewer people built them. That made the rental situation even worse, driving the real value of current real estate up even higher, and making the difference between government-mandated rents and the true market value of the rents even greater. Landlords then stopped maintaining the buildings as well, because they weren’t earning enough from rent to warrant constant upgrades. The result was less housing, and lower quality housing. Predictable as rain.
So then the government is forced to intervene even more in the market - either forcing builders by law to build rental units at a loss, or taxing other people so that they could give subsidies to builders to make up the difference. Now the government is pouring money into the building industry, giving checks to the very landlords they claimed were the greedy ones who originally caused the problem.
The result of the subsidy is that housing doesn’t get built where there is the greatest need - no one cares about that. The housing gets built where the combination of building cost - subsidy means the most profit. So then the government has to intervene AGAIN, now controlling where buiders can build. The result was Sarnia, where the government subsidized massive public housing works - surprise, they didn’t get the number of units right, creating a glut of housing that drove down the value of other existing real estate. Yet another unintended consequence.
Finally, the NDP got kicked out, and the Tories tried to undo some of the damage. But the market was already distorted heavily. Rent controlled prices were keeping families in locations they could never afford without the rent controls, so the government was forced to institute a policy whereby the rents could only be returned to market levels after the current tenants left. So what do you think happened? Landlords started finding all sorts of reasons to evict people. This required yet ANOTHER intervention by government, setting up review boards for evictions, heavy fines for false evictions, inspectors, yada yada.
In the meantime, builders who owned rent controlled buildings but who could not build new structures that weren’t rent controlled would start diverting maintenance funds into new construction. Hey, why not? If the other buildings get run down, maybe the tenants will leave voluntarily, and they can re-rent them out. Or simply abandon them. So now you need MORE intervention to try and stop this.
And so it goes. Try to control a complex economy by issuing edicts based on your social concerns, and the result is a mess. And you always wind up with more and more government managing more and more aspects of our lives until everything is under the thumb of a shabby bureaucracy staffed by government employees. The public sector takes over, innovation is stifled, capital isn’t free to move to where it does the most good, and we take another step down the road to serfdom.
It’ll happen in Venezuela, too. Just watch.
Since I was not even aware the NDP had ever governed Ontario until you brought it to my attention (see this thread), I think I shall wait for some left-wing Canuck such as Muffin (see post #24) to defend the party’s record then and there.
:rolleyes: Because “market demand” exists only WRT goods and services for which end-use consumers are willing to pay, individually, and which they expect to get more or less immediately. Society as a whole needs a lot of goods that do not meet that standard. I would have thought that was too obvious a truism for even the most radical Libertarian to question.
Yes, it has occurred to me. Seemed like a good idea back in the '50s when no one imagined the oil might run out – and it still seems like a good idea, despite the downside. A highway system is a good thing to have, even if a day comes (and it will) when we can’t afford to use it quite so often.
In any case, my point remains: The existence of the Interstate Highway System proves it is possible for a government to build something, and build it right, that the private sector never would have done.
Oh, the “market demand” for rail service in the U.S. will exist – once gasoline becomes a great deal more expensive at the pump, which it will. By which time our petroleum-dependent economy may be so depressed that it might be too late, in economic-resources terms, for us to build New Trains.
As for Venezuela – they’re building railroads, presumably, because that’s what most people can use; individual automobile ownership being nowhere near as widespread as in the U.S., and not likely to be either, and there’s nothing wrong with that so long as people have some other way to get around. If they were to build a national freeway system too – that might make economic sense, even if only truckers used it.
Cite?
And why not?
I think you’ll find the Europeans see it very differently. They might have balked at the proposed EU Constitution, but only a small minority in any country wants their country to secede from the EU. It provides economic (and social) benefits the people value too much. Eastern European countries are clamoring to get in.
So what makes you think the EU doesn’t make sense?
Cite? Really, cite? Because I was not under the impression that any Third-World country had made a good bargain out of embracing the World Bank/IMF’s economic-globalization and “economic shock therapy” policies. (I know Mexico, apart from the elite class, did not get much good out of NAFTA, nor did the U.S.; Canada, OTOH, did.) It’s just saddled them with national debts they have no hope of paying off.
:rolleyes: Same place Adam Smith got his.
I’m not, of course, arguing (nor would Clay or Lincoln have argued) that protectionism is always the best policy for a country’s economy. The U.S. needed it while we were in the process of industrializing. After WWII, we were the world’s leading industrial exporter and naturally preferred free trade. The Smoot-Hawley Tariff was probably a bad idea at the time, but that does not mean the economic thinking underlying it was entirely misconceived. N.B.: The Smoot-Hawley Tariff did not cause the Great Depression, as Jude Wanniski fatuously insisted back in 1978.
BTW, if you want the Straight Dope on on the on-the-ground social and economic effects of the European Union, check out The United States of Europe: The New Superpower and the End of American Supremacy, by T.R. Reid.
This maybe is an aside, but I think it’s sort of unfair to say that Bob Rae is proof that NDP government is a disaster. The Rae government was a disaster, obviously (and one of the few smart things the Liberals did recently was not pick Bob Rae as party leader), but what about Gary Doer in Manitoba? The Manitoban economy hasn’t gone into the toilet, Manitoba has managed to have consistantly balanced budgets and a pretty thriving economy, in spite of NDP government.
Muffin admits he muffed it – too many inexperienced people trying to runthe show. Then Harris & Co. came in from the opposite direction and made things worse.
Look to Manitoba, and to a lesser degree Sask., for better examples.
What, Rae switched parties? Or tried to?
He did. He pretty much left electoral politics for a while after the NDP lost Ontario. He sat on a bunch of commissions, including the Security Intelligence Review Committee, and the one investigating the Air India bombing. Then, just recently, when Martin resigned, Rae joined the Liberals and announced he was seeking the leadership.
Interesting story . . . I wonder why. Personal conversion? Personal career opportunism? Or classic political entryism? 
He wrote an article in the National Post in 2002 called “Parting Company with the NDP”, in which he officially renounced the party, criticizing Svend Robinson and the federal NDP because Robinson had called Israel “a terrorist state”, and had publically supported Arafat. From his article:
Based on that, Rae must have been on the right wing of the NDP.
But I’ll wait for a Canadian to explain what, if anything, that signifies.
I’m on board with the conceptual idea that there are some common infrastructure pieces that government has a role in helping to build, for the reasons you mentioned. I just don’t expect them to do it all that well, and the scope of what I would consider reasonable for government to be involved in is no doubt much lower than yours.
As far as trains go, it seems to me that if we were really in short supply of trains, you’d see full trains and escalating costs to ship items by train. In fact, the opposite occurs. Light Rail Transit, despite being heavily subsidized, is under-utilized almost everywhere it has been installed. Amtrak can’t make a profit. Where exactly are all these trains supposed to go, and what need will they fill that doesn’t exist now?
Actually, I tend to agree with you that the interstate highway system was a pretty good engineering project. However, like all other government projects it has had unintended consequences - one of them being that the existence of a huge nationwide grid of freeways paid for by tax dollars has tipped the scales heavily in favor of autos and away from mass transit.
Engineering projects like this are significantly different than attempting to micro-manage a large, complex economy. Sure, government agencies can build some big, impressive things. The Apollo project, for example. I’m actually in favor of some of those things, even though such projects almost always carry the stigma of government - bureaucracy, bloated budgets, and inefficiency. Still, no one else is about to build a moon rocket, so if we want to go to the moon, the government’s our only choice.
But when governments get involved in actually trying to manage the economy itself, it fails. Because an economy is hideously complex, and the information required to make good decisions is simply not available to the government. That’s why government intervention in setting prices and tariffs is such a bad idea.
Or maybe it will never get that expensive. Gas is back below $50/barrel again. Oh, I have no doubt that one day gasoline will be too expensive to put in our cars - but by the time it is, we may already have better solutions that don’t involve trains. In fact, you’ve put your finger on one of the biggest problems of government - the only tools it has are those that are available today. So if you want to replace cars, well, you’ve got trains. So you build lots of trains. In the meantime, the market, had it been left to itself, would have adapted. Maybe the adaptation would have involved trains, or maybe it would have involved hybrid cars or even some new technology we can’t even foresee today. The market innovates - the government takes what exists and re-directs resources around it. And that tends to displace innovation.
No, they’re building railroads because that’s what a central planning bureau thinks Venezuela needs. The history of such bureaus actually getting it right is pretty dismal.
Actually, before I say that I should ask if the railroads being built are actually being built by the government, or whether there is still a pocket of free enterprise involved.
Did I actually say the EU doesn’t make sense? I was responding to what I thought was the claim that the Europeans instituted trade tariffs. The EU makes sense because it’s the opposite of that - a free trade zone within Europe. That’s the best part of the EU - opening borders, allowing the free flow of goods, labor, and capital between countries.
Where the EU is failing is in the areas where central planners want to start taking over and dictating how the countries will be run. Unified work regulations, unified currency, one-size-fits-all regulations on how government must spend its money and what kind of debts they can have, etc.
Hong Kong. It was once a poor developing nation. It had absolutely no trade barriers. It was a ‘sweatshop’ country, and ‘made in Hong Kong’ was usually seen as a sign of cheap, inferior goods. The British government had a ‘Laissez-faire’ policy in Hong Kong, allowing the free market to work and avoiding government intervention as much as possible.
Hong Kong was crowded, and had virtually no natural resources of its own. The people came from the same cohort as the Chinese nationals across the water, starting out with similar backgrounds, education, etc. China had abundant land and resources which Hong Kong lacked. Along the way, Hong Kong picked up boat people from Vietnam, and people fleeing starvation in China. They had an open-door policy towards these immigrants - not cherry-picking the best and brightest, but accepting them all.
In 1945, Hong Kong was a poor area filled with shacks and hard labor. Today, Hong Kong’s per-capita GDP is $37,100, one of the highest in the world. It never protected its industry - in fact, it’s considered the freest economy in the world. Not only are there no trade barriers, there are also very few internal barriers to setting up a business. Go rent a place, fill out a single form, and open up. The result has been an explosion of innovation, capital investment, and ultimately a huge gain in the standard of living for the people.
You can also look at Singapore. In 1965 when Singapore became independent, it was a very poor country. The government responded by adopting pro-business, pro-trade policies with generally low tariffs and lots of economic freedom (Singapore is ranked #2 in economic freedom, behind Hong Kong). The result was 40 years of growth that averaged 8% per year. From this chart you can see the amazing results: in 1965, Singapore had a per-capita GDP of US$427 - about half of what the average for the third world is today. By 2005, that had grown to $26,892 - roughly on par with the large European economies. Starting from third-world status. Singapore is currently negiating for full no-tariff free trade zones throughout Asia.
More after supper…
NAFTA is not to blame. NAFTA actually had very little to do with what’s happened in Mexico in the last decade. This Congressional Budget Office Report does a pretty good job of explaining this. Regression studies that have controlled for other factors have found that NAFTA had a positive impact on U.S. exports to Mexico AND U.S. imports from Mexico, and a positive impact on U.S. GDP. But the amounts were very slight, and huge changes in the economy of Mexico swamp any small changes NAFTA may have had.
You really need to be careful when reading analysis of free trade from left-wing journals, as this is one area where they tend to be highly biased. Mainly because big labor is strongly against free trade, prefering protectionism to prop up salaries. So a lot of studies get commissioned by big labor or other left-wing groups that tend to grossly exaggerate negative effects of free trade while glossing over the positive.
If you wouldn’t accept at face value a study on gun control put out by the NRA, you should be equally skeptical of an anti-free trade report issued by the AFL-CIO, or rhetoric about free trade coming from a left-wing supporter of trade unionism.
Free trade IS a threat to unionized jobs - unions derive their power from being able to control the labor market and increase scarcity in labor, thereby driving up its cost. But at the same time, free trade is a huge boon to the people who buy the goods and services that would otherwise come from those jobs. And it’s a huge boon to workers in competitive industries who see their markets expanding, and therefore new jobs being created, from the lowering of barriers for their products.
Absent any other economic rationale, the mere fact that Lincoln instituted trade protection means nothing. So did George W. Bush. I note you didn’t use his steel tariffs as one of your examples.
Cites for the ‘need’ for protectionism in the U.S. in the 1800’s?
Here’s the thing - when governments invoke trade protection, it’s almost always done at the behest of powerful industries who are trying to protect their own little slice of the pie from competition. And in this case, business and labor in those industries agree, and together bring significant lobbying power to the government. In other countries, it’s outright corruption - bribery or other influence over government by business that gets governments to pass laws restricting trade.
We do a lot of talking on this board about market failure. Here is a perfect example of ‘government failure’ - when a policy benefits a small, highly powerful group, but damages everyone else (but not enough to cause them to take political action), the decision making gets heavily skewed in favor of the powerful against the masses, even if the aggregate result is bad for the country. Government ‘job creation’ is another example of this - the government takes in, say, a billion dollars in tax revenue, and spends the billion propping up an industry or building new infrastructure. The results of the spending are visible and concrete - you point to a new factory, put up a nice powerpoint showing how many new jobs were created building your new freeway or what have you.
But there are no free lunches. The tax money raised to pay for those jobs came out of the economy. $3 per person for a year. That effect can be hard to see, but it’s real. It’s one less dinner out for a family, making a restaraunt earn a little less. It’s a CD that didn’t get purchased, or a movie ticket not purchased. The effect is still real - jobs are still lost on the margins. Money is pulled from where people wanted it to go, and diverted to a powerful special interest with friends in Washington. But the person who lost $3 is not going to make a big fuss. They’re not about to lobby Washington for their three bucks back. So the damage is hidden, the benefits exaggerated by the benefitciaries justifying their pork.
Don’t buy into it. You don’t trust big business any other time - don’t trust them now because their rhetoric happens to fit into your worldview, or because this once their interests happen to align with labor’s. They’re still screwing over the little guy.
You don’t have to be a net exporter to benefit from free trade. BOTH sides benefit. It’s also a benefit to lower barriers to bringing better, cheaper goods into your country. Note that under NAFTA U.S. exports to Mexico AND Mexican exports to the U.S. went up. The jobs lost in industries that couldn’t compete with imported goods are made up by jobs created in industries that see their export markets grow. This is good for the economy because the jobs created are ones in an industry that has shown itself to have a comparative advantage over its American counterparts, and the jobs lost are in industries that can’t compete in the world market. Therefore, the overall productivity of the country grows as it focuses its labor and capital on what it does best.
Saskatchewan, despite being resource rich, is declining in population and has an economy dwarfed by its neighbor. Saskatchewan’s population is now smaller than greater Edmonton by itself, smaller than it was in 1985, and about the same size as it was in 1931. People are not choosing to live in Saskatchewan. The NDP’s high tax, high spending, business unfriendly economic climate has a lot to do with it. Saskatchewan is the world’s largest producer of Potash, the largest producer of Uranium, and has substantial oil and gas resources. It has large areas of great farmland. It has a lot of natural advantages. And yet, its population is leaving and is now under 1 million people.
High energy prices are turning that around somewhat right now - Saskatchewan’s GDP is growing. So there’s hope there. Although I see the NDP government is planning to spend the money on more social programs and ‘investment’. They should try cutting taxes instead.
And while Manitoba has an NDP government, it seems to be cut from a different mold as other big-spending NDP governments. The 2006 budget has tax cuts, a government surplus, and the second lowest provincial spending in Canada.
I must say, that having read over the Manitoba budget, these guys may be the best NDP government I’ve seen, and they may be indicative of the rise of a ‘new left’ - a left that realizes that without wealth, you can’t afford social programs. They believe in the market, but seek to use government to take what’s needed to address social issues while having as light a footprint on the economy as they can, lest they break it.
To me, this is the smart evolution of the left. Give up on the notion of controlling industry and taking it over for ‘the people’. Forget about mandating equality in outcome and capping the income of the rich. It won’t work, and attempts to manage the economy like that are doomed to bring misery to the people you are trying to help. Instead, embrace the capitalist framework, and work within it for your social goals. If you think a collective is a good way to run a business, start one. Out-compete the other guys. If businesses pollute too much, create incentives for them to invest in new technology. If people aren’t earning enough at the bottom levels, give them tax breaks rather than putting mandates on business. That sort of thing.
Yup. He was. That was part of the problem when he was Premier of Ontario. He talked a nice reasonable line to get elected, but once in power, had to deal with his own NDP Members of Provincial Parliament who were of a more ideological and less practical bent, and who really didn’t know how to run a government.
But the government didn’t act in a rightwing way. It essentially followed the NDP platform of Keynesian economic policy, heavy social spending, higher taxes on business and the rich, and more regulations.
The result was an economic melt down.
Sam, you are sounding like a subversive. 
And I hope that it is the path that the NDP takes.
Coincidentally, I was at an NDP table at a community dinner last Sunday. It was an interesting mix of people, including the expected big union guy, university prof, high school teacher, and politician, but there were others there that were indicative of a different direction, including myself (a sole practitioner lawyer), a brass tacks municipal politician, and a property investor.
At the other end of town this difference in direction can also be seen. The NDP politician is a small businessman, and a couple of lawyers (one of whom was a classmate and friend of Rae, and thinks he is one of the smartest people he has ever met) help him with his campaigns.
These folks are not people who are insulated in an ivory tower, or insulated by a union, or just plain out in left field picking daisies. They are small business persons who compete and succeed based on the bottom line, but who also want a nation that is good for all Canadians, not just the lucky ones.
In Canada, the NDP grew up through unionism, particularly in the mining and textile industries. The working conditions in those industries in the first part of the last century were often horrid. As unions grew in power, working conditions and remuneration were addressed. The flip side of the coin, however, was that businesses with union shops lost flexibility.
One thing Rae had to face was the need to move the economy forward, with big unions resisting being shaken up. That knocked his legs out from under him – particularly since some of the most powerful unions were composed of government employees and teachers (who are ultimately funded by the government).
Since that time, some of the unions in the resource and manufacturing industries have learned that they must be competitive – if not, the mill closes, the plant moves, and everyone is out of a job. Unfortunately, some unions have not yet realized this, so the NDP still does not have a secure power base, and still does not have a clear direction.
How can the NDP drive the economy forward but at the same time give citizens stability and protection? How can unions help make their industries more competitive, while at the same time improve the working conditions and wages of their members? I believe that it is vital to not kill the goose that laid the golden egg.
Just a pragmatist. As a believer in free markets, I don’t have to just advocate Libertarianism to try to move the world in what I think is a better direction - I can also point out ways in which the market can also help people with different goals.
And in some cases, our interests are perfectly aligned. For example, I believe that a lot of the pollution we get today is because of a market failure - the externality cost of pollution is not part of the transaction between energy producer and consumer, and this distorts prices and creates inefficiencies.
So, I would advocate a carbon tax to correct that externality. Done right, a carbon tax could actually make the energy market more efficient by correctly monetizing all of the costs of the various options. That may push people into more efficient living, or it may drive Co2 neutral energy sources or carbon sequestering. I don’t really care which. If the cost of CO2 is accounted for in the transaction, the market will deal with the problem efficiently.
The ‘old’ way for environmentalists to handle this run the gamut from anti-business slogans and attempts to curtail production by fiat, to government-mandated carbon quotas to forcing industries to all adopt the same standards for carbon emission, rather than letting companies choose the most efficient path for themselves once they have to pay for the CO2 they release.
The tax would have to be revenue-neutral to avoid it becoming an escalating cash grab, and would have to be based on sound economic analysis of the true costs - or the best estimate we can come up with.
As for economic justice, remember that a rising tide lifts all boats. This is a cliche, and many on the left dismiss it in knee-jerk fashion by claiming that all the wealth just goes to the rich, but it’s clearly not true. The ‘poverty line’ in the U.S. is almost twice the average world per-capita income, meaning you can be ‘poor’ in the U.S. and still live better than half the people in the world. And the poverty line in the U.S. isn’t much below the average incomes of some European countries, and only about $12,000 below the median incomes in rich European countries like France. And in fact it’s TWENTY times greater than the average 3rd world income. Clearly the wealth generated by America’s capitalist system has helped everyone. Incomes rose on average 4% last year in the U.S., btw.
Or look at it this way - if you are looking for a way to provide for, say, the unemployed, wouldn’t you rather have 4.5% unemployment and a $38,000 per-capita GDP (the U.S.) than an 11% unemployment rate and a $27,000 per-capita income (France)? A strong economy means fewer unemployed or really destitute people in the first place, and more money to help them with in the second. If both countries spend the same amount of money as a percentage of GDP on the poor, the poor in America would receive much better benefits.
If I were in the NDP or the Green party, I’d first advocate environmental measures that seek to correct true externalities in the market that distort production towards more polluting industries. If I wanted to improve the efficiency of autos, I wouldn’t use something as crude as a CAFE standard - I’d simply implement a carbon tax at the pump, and let people decide how much they want to pay for better mileage. Let the SUV drivers bear the actual burden of those SUVs, and you’ll push more of them into smaller vehicles while actually making the market fairer and more efficient.
After that, I’d push policies that incentivise people to act in more socially responsible ways, or that use the market’s strengths towards my goals. Instead of setting arbitrary pollution thresholds for factories, implement a market in pollution credits, and let the companies figure out what the true costs are by negotiating with each other. If you want to encourage conservation, advocate tax breaks for people houses that meet higher insulation standards, or provide tax credits for capital improvements like roof-mounted solar cells or hybrid vehicles.
These things also distort the market, but they still let prices move freely. They just push the equilibrium point in a certain direction because of the subsidization of one choice. But you’d be surprised how effective that can be. It pushes all the people on the margin to the side you want.
I wouldn’t necessarily advocate all of these things myself, because I’m more of a purist. But I think if you advocated them it would go along way towards pulling your ideas into the mainstream and giving you a shot at actually getting something done.
Bill Clinton understood this. That’s why his admistration was as successful domestically as it was.
There’s even an argument for improving health care that’s based on market principles. The argument is that the health insurance market doesn’t work because of a market failure due to asymmettric information. Insurers don’t know what you know about your health. So they have to err on the side of caution. In the meantime, people with hidden health conditions have more incentive to get health insurance than people without. So the insurance market tends to correct itself for this and price insurance in a way that’s skewed towards the biggest risks, driving up costs.
One solution to this has been HMOs and group insurance - covering risk by averaging it out over the population. There may be roles here for the government in being a clearing house for information, or an insurer of last resort, or even an entity that covers catastrophic claims. There are a lot of market-based reforms that could be made to health care that would work much better than trying to simply nationalize the industry and having the government run health care.
As for improving working conditions and wages, wages go up when productivity increases. Advocate policies that improve the productivity of the workers. Advocate policies that improve worker productivity, and their wages will go up naturally.