National Review editor Rich Lowry blames the UAW for GM's troubles: If only the union hadn't selfishly demanded good benefits and high wages for line workers, the company's troubles would not have come to this, he says in an opinion piece claiming GM was "sabotaged from within." As if management had no leverage at the bargaining table.

But "good benefits, especially good quality health care, don't bring down any decent company," says Tim Yeager, a UAW negotiator who has represented The Progressive's employees, among many other UAW-affiliated workers. "There are countries in the world where everyone has a right to decent health care and they're less wealthy than GM," Yeager points out. (GM's budget exceeds the gross domestic product of about half the world's nations).

The late, great UAW president Walter Reuther, who first negotiated the society-altering health-care benefits, pensions, and cost-of-living wages enjoyed by American auto workers after World War II, long ago advised GM to make smaller, economical, fuel-efficient cars, Yeager notes. The company ignored him. Likewise, GM was slow to take any interest in hybrid technology. In perhaps the unkindest cut, the China Post online, blamed GM's penchant for manufacturing "boring vehicles" Americans don't want for the companies defeat by foreign competition, especially Toyota, maker of the hybrid Prius.

If any good is to come of the demise of good corporate employers like GM, it could be that Americans see the need to push for a national solution to the health-care crisis.

"I think GM ought to get on Congress and push for health-care reform," says Yeager. "Instead of blaming the UAW, let's talk about national health care."

Rightwingers like Lowry think good pay and benefits for factory workers are a cumbersome relic of the past. But there are still enough Americans who have a vision of a large, secure middle class that there is time to push for a future in which we are not divided into the few, isolated "New Economy" millionaires, and a vast population of underpaid, uninsured workers with no power to improve their lot.