But the increases would raise benefits more for high-wage workers than for low-wage workers.
Costly regulations and high-wage workers in North America, Japan and northern Europe often make it profitable for shipping companies to reflag.
But that friction could now be limited given that the low-wage workers will be mainly in new Ford factories and may seldom meet high-wage workers.
Instead, a slowdown in pay at the bottom end of the pay scale and a widening disparity between low-wage and high-wage workers is to blame.
Under unrelenting pressure to cut costs, American companies are now replacing high-wage workers here with like-quality, low-wage workers abroad.
Most of the cuts would be felt by high-wage workers, with disabled and low-wage workers being largely protected from the cuts.
These benefit cuts alone would mean that high-wage workers would not experience rising real benefits as their real wages grew.
Alternatively, benefits for middle- and high-wage workers who retire after the turn of the century could be reduced by 25 percent to 30 percent.
The payoff of this plan is that high-wage workers will not feel much pain when it comes time to turn over taxes that are needed to support the elderly.
Temporary work visas are often used to replace high-wage workers in industries such as computer programming, biotechnology and engineering with lower-wage workers imported from other countries.
