This fascinating round-up of the Iraqi economic situation, in the New York Times, puts the most interesting information at the end (according to what seems to be the standard NYT practice). The US is being driven by the logic of the security disaster there to maintain Saddam-style socialism, issuing various labor-force edicts and paying workers to do nothing in factories that shouldn’t exist.
But the [state-owned shoe] company has not had to fire anyone, because the United States does not want to put more unemployed Iraqis on the streets and risk worsening the security crisis. So the occupying authorities are paying the salaries of all 3,000 workers, even if they have nothing to do.
In this, the shoe company is no different from any of Iraq’s 53 state-owned companies, whose workers are all still being paid by the occupation, at a cost of several million dollars each month. The cost is small compared with the others the occupation is incurring, but the payments show that for now, security considerations have topped the United States’ hope of making the state-owned companies more efficient.
With wages subsidized but the shoe company forbidden to fire anyone, estimating profit or loss is impossible, much less planning long-term investments in new equipment, said Ali Hadi, a manager. “We can’t calculate these things now,” he said. “When next year comes, we will calculate next year.”
