[quote=ctr70]1. Public pension investment tank = tax payers make up difference
2. Private sector 401k investments tank = retiree has to just take less and live with it
#1 we all know is complete b*llsh*t, an out of date corrupt archaic relic of history, is bankrupting our communities across the nation, and must end.[/quote]
No, what’s bullshit is private sector workers LOSING their DB pension benefits. It is bankrupting our communities across the nation, and it will be our #1 problem in the future as waves of workers are forced into retirement (because of sickness/disability and/or age discrimination in the workplace), and they will have no means to support themselves.
UCGal has repeatedly recommended this book:
About the book:
In December 2010, General Electric [GE] held its annual meeting in New York City for analysts and shareholders. CEO Jeff Immelt reported on GE’s financial health and said that GE’s pension plan was a problem. “The pension has been a drag for a decade,” he said. It would cause the company to lose 13 cents per share the coming year. In order to control costs, GE was—regretfully—going to close the pension plan for new employees. The implication was that workers’ pensions were dragging the company down.
What Immelt didn’t mention was that GE’s pension plans had actually contributed billions of dollars to the company’s bottom line over the last 15 years, earnings that the executives had taken credit for. Nor did he mention that GE hadn’t contributed anything to the workers’ pension plans since 1987 and still had enough to cover all the current and future retirees.
Nor did he mention that the executive pensions for GE executives were a burden. Unlike the plans for the 250,000 workers and retirees, the executive pensions had a $4.4 billion obligation that steadily drained cash from the company’s coffers, including $573 million over the past three years alone.
Why was GE closing its fully funded pension plan, while continuing its financially burdensome executive plan? This is the question to which Ellen Schultz’s incisive new book, Retirement Heist: How Companies Plunder and Profit from the Nest Eggs of American Workers (Portfolio, 2011) offers a powerful answer.
It’s time people educate themselves about the topic before spewing the rhetoric and propaganda of those who are trying to destroy the middle class in America. Once the power is concentrated into the hands of the weathiest capitalists, it will be nearly impossible for labor (and that means YOU, if you work for a living) to ever gain a foothold, again. When other countries have seen such similar concentrations of power, they have almost always had to endure many years bloody revolution after bloody revoltion. I hope Americans wake up before it is too late.
