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You are here: Home / Politics / Domestic Politics / And the Robbery Continues

And the Robbery Continues

by John Cole|  July 10, 20123:15 pm| 31 Comments

This post is in: Domestic Politics, Free Markets Solve Everything, Fuck The Middle-Class, Show Us on the Doll Where the Invisible Hand Touched You

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While the Republicans in Congress are coming for your health care and social security, their friends in the “free market” are busy gutting your pension:

A new law will let companies contribute billions of dollars less to their workers’ pension funds, raising concerns about weakening the plans that millions of Americans count on for retirement.

But with many companies already freezing or getting rid of pension plans, many critics are reluctant to force the issue.

Some expect the changes, passed by Congress last month and signed Friday by President Barack Obama, to have little impact on the nation’s enormous $1.9 trillion in estimated pension fund assets. And it is more important, they suggest, to avoid giving employers a new reason to limit or jettison remaining pension benefits by forcing them to contribute more than they say they can manage.

The equation underscores a harsh reality for unions, consumer advocates and others who normally go to the mat for workers and retirees: When it comes to battling over pensions, the fragile economy of 2012 gives the business community a lot of leverage.

Ask yourself- why would blue dogs and Republicans decide that private businesses don’t need to fund their pension plans, but the Postal Service has to have every penny for YEARS TO COME accounted for? Oh, and meanwhile:

Chronically weak stock markets and record low bond yields have pushed company pension deficits in the United States and Britain sharply higher, adding to the burden of retirees living longer than ever before, reports said on Tuesday.

In the United States the aggregate deficit of S&P 1500 companies grew $59 billion in the first half of the year to $543 billion, consultancy Mercer said.

Corporate America is sitting on total liabilities of $2.09 trillion against total assets of $1.55 trillion, Mercer added.

HOOCOODANODE?

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31Comments

  1. 1.

    beltane

    July 10, 2012 at 3:21 pm

    Well, boo-hoo on the workers moochers. If Mitt Romney was able to grow his humble 401(k) into a $100 million fortune then so should everyone else.

  2. 2.

    LGRooney

    July 10, 2012 at 3:23 pm

    One would think the masters of the universe would be better at planning for future contingencies and obligations.

  3. 3.

    MikeInSewickley

    July 10, 2012 at 3:24 pm

    With each passing day, I truly believe America and especially the middle class are completely fucked.

    George Carlin (RIP) is becoming more a prophet with quotes like this –

    “The rich make MOST of money -pay NONE of the taxes; the middle class makes SOME of money – pay ALL of the taxes; the poor are just there to scare the shit out of the middle class, and keep them going to those jobs.”

    We are all owned and the government is for the rich globalists who are about done sucking the marrow out of America’s bones and moving on to China.

    OK – I’m done ranting and I’ll still vote Democratic but I’m beginning to wonder if it will do any good in the long run.

  4. 4.

    EconWatcher

    July 10, 2012 at 3:25 pm

    What kills me is that many of the old Tea Party folks are among the last who will ever receive defined-benefit pensions. These guys got everything from America’s heyday–high wages, social security, Medicare. And yet they end their lives bitter and resentful, and want to yank everything away from everyone else.

    No offense to our retirement-age commenters, but a critical mass of your generation seems a little self-centered.

  5. 5.

    cathyx

    July 10, 2012 at 3:26 pm

    It’s a competition among the elite for who can have all the money in the world. Winner take all.

  6. 6.

    Herbal Infusion Bagger

    July 10, 2012 at 3:26 pm

    When the public sector underfunds their pensions, it’s all Oh Noes, teh Publick Sector is Fail. (Like the B.S. that the USPS has had to go through with massively front-loading its pension obligations.)

    When the private sector underfunds, it’s all “How can we aid you in screwing your workers, sir?”

    We’re turning into a feudal society.

  7. 7.

    c u n d gulag

    July 10, 2012 at 3:27 pm

    I’d have more respect for these criminals if they held-us up in an alley wearing a mask and carrying a big gun.

    But, years ago, the professional criminals learned you can steal a lot more with a pen than a gun – and face NO penalties, unlike the poor schmuck(ess) who had to resort to penny-anty crime.

    And now, the best-of-the-best professional criminals have learned that using electron, bandwidth, and economic bullsh*t is the most lucrative of all.
    AND – with even less danger of being held accountable.

    After all, if we arrest and charge one of these blessed “Job Creators,” where will all the jobs come from.

    Hey, tip to criminals:
    If you hire more people, and give them pensions, you can siphon off more money LATER.

    But, that doesn’t satisfy these assholes ‘instant gratification’ needs.

    Pitchforks!

  8. 8.

    Yutsano

    July 10, 2012 at 3:28 pm

    Sounds like WAI to me.

  9. 9.

    Ash Can

    July 10, 2012 at 3:28 pm

    The more I think about it, the more I believe the erosion of tax penalties for not re-investing profits back into the companies is going to prove to be the death of this nation and its economy.

  10. 10.

    Comrade Dread

    July 10, 2012 at 3:30 pm

    OK – I’m done ranting and I’ll still vote Democratic but I’m beginning to wonder if it will do any good in the long run.

    Maybe.

    The long term goal is to push the wages and benefits of the majority of Americans down until we’re more like a third world state where we have a handful of billionaires who run everything with the full backing of the state and its military, and a vast underclass of people making subsistence wages.

  11. 11.

    cathyx

    July 10, 2012 at 3:31 pm

    The more this type of thing happens, the more uninhabitable the world will be.

  12. 12.

    beltane

    July 10, 2012 at 3:40 pm

    @EconWatcher: Yup, the Teabaggers are mostly drawn from the ranks of those who enjoyed the full benefit of postwar prosperity without having to endure the ravages of either the war itself or the Great Depression that preceded it. Instead of being grateful for the rare blessings they have received, their response has been to writhe in anger over the possibility that anyone who isn’t them might also be able to live a decent life. Ingrates and whiners is all they are.

  13. 13.

    jrg

    July 10, 2012 at 3:46 pm

    @EconWatcher: No kidding. I was at the beach a couple of weeks ago, and drove past a multimillion dollar home with a “don’t tread on me” flag, and a boomer age man working in the yard.

    I wanted to get out of the car and beat his ass. Their whining is infuriating. They get their tax cuts, they get their Medicare, they get their Social Security, they got their heavily subsidized college education… Now a not insignificant number of them are howling about how fucking oppressed they are.

  14. 14.

    What Have The Romans Ever Done for Us? (formerly MarkJ)

    July 10, 2012 at 3:51 pm

    All this when corporate profits are at record levels no less. They have no obligations to their pensioners – they already got the work out of those suckers and those suckers should have known that deferred compensation was never actually going to materialize when they were counting on it.

    It’s all going to the shareholders and CEO now. The retirees can eat cat food for the rest of their lives. But don’t you dare mention the sanctity of contracts (which pensions are) because libtards have some weasely bullshit argument about how those contracts are less sacred or binding than contracts between individuals. Nevermind the fact that corporate entities aren’t individuals and that following their own logic, our obligations to corporations should arguably be given a similar pass, logic only applies when it supports their arguments, not when it refutes them.

  15. 15.

    Ruckus

    July 10, 2012 at 4:16 pm

    @EconWatcher:
    seems a little self-centered.

    Seems? SEEMS? Boy are you too polite.
    As I understand it we are the first me generation. Maybe not the first or last greedy fuckers in the world but as a generation goes…

  16. 16.

    Rob in CT

    July 10, 2012 at 4:50 pm

    Recently a friend and I were discussing the fall of Rome (the Western empire, anyway). We’re both history geeks, though he took his geekery all the way and got his PhD and is now a professor.

    Anyway, he brought up a factor that shook me. He said that over time, the elite rigged it so they were mostly or entirely exempt from taxation, so the burden became ever more crushing on the little people. It got so bad people sold their land for whatever crumbs they could get (to elites who were exempt, which made the problem worse and worse) and moved to Rome and became part of “the mob.” They gave up working and went on the dole. Which was, apparently, the rational choice. Their labor was replaced by that of slaves. Land ownership consolidated such that a tiny, tiny percentage of the population owned damned near everything.

    There were those who pointed out that this was disasterous policy, but they were murdered (Gracchi).

    I don’t think that’s the only factor (others include, obviously: the “barbarian” migrations/invasions, the numerous Roman civil wars/succession struggles, plagues, and more). But yeah, it shook me.

  17. 17.

    Kathleen

    July 10, 2012 at 4:53 pm

    @Herbal Infusion Bagger: I contend that the requirement for USPS was part of a game plan to run it into the ground so it could become “privatized” and, voila, for the venture vultures, lovely parting gifts, including a lifetime supply of Rice a Roni and a ginormous pension fund to feed them.

  18. 18.

    Calouste

    July 10, 2012 at 4:59 pm

    @Rob in CT:

    Funny that, in the 18th century, the French elites were also exempt from taxation.

    Does anyone know what the tax rates were in Russia in the late 19th century?

  19. 19.

    What Have The Romans Ever Done for Us? (formerly MarkJ)

    July 10, 2012 at 5:23 pm

    @What Have The Romans Ever Done for Us? (formerly MarkJ): by libtard I meant retarded libertarian, but just recalled that it’s generally used sarcastically to connote a liberal ’round these parts.

  20. 20.

    What Have The Romans Ever Done for Us? (formerly MarkJ)

    July 10, 2012 at 5:27 pm

    @Rob in CT: Well if life gets hard enough the barbarians don’t seem all that bad in comparison, so why put up a fight when you can just point over there to where all the loot is?

  21. 21.

    burnspbesq

    July 10, 2012 at 5:42 pm

    There is actually a valid rationale, based on real and repeatable actuarial math, for this. But the optics suck. And given what’s at stake in this election, if the Democrats want to demagogue on this issue, I can deal.

  22. 22.

    Origuy

    July 10, 2012 at 5:49 pm

    @Calouste: I couldn’t find anything specific about tax rates except that they were high and many people tried to evade them. I did find this in the Russian Empire entry of Wikipedia:

    The serfdom which had developed in Russia in the 16th century, and became enshrined by law in 1649, was abolished in 1861.
    __
    The household servants or dependents attached to the personal service were merely set free, while the landed peasants received their houses and orchards, and allotments of arable land. These allotments were given over to the rural commune (mir), which was made responsible for the payment of taxes for the allotments. For these allotments the peasants had to pay a fixed rent which could be fulfilled by personal labour. The allotments could be redeemed by peasants with the help of the Crown, and then they were freed from all obligations to the landlord. The Crown paid the landlord and the peasants had to repay the Crown, for forty-nine years at 6% interest. The financial redemption to the landlord was not calculated on the value of the allotments, but was considered as a compensation for the loss of the compulsory labour of the serfs. Many proprietors contrived to curtail the allotments which the peasants had occupied under serfdom, and frequently deprived them of precisely the parts of which they were most in need: pasture lands around their houses. The result was to compel the peasants to rent land from their former masters.

    Emphasis mine.

  23. 23.

    Ronzoni Rigatoni

    July 10, 2012 at 5:50 pm

    @Kathleen: “I contend that the requirement for USPS was part of a game plan to run it into the ground so it could become ‘privatized'” And everybody working for them knows this, including my favorite Postmistress(?) who used to be a (gasp!)Republican. So how on earth will UPS or FedEx service the uneconomical RFD, since nowadays they just drop these shipments off at, yep, you guessed it, the Post Office.

  24. 24.

    Herbal Infusion Bagger

    July 10, 2012 at 5:59 pm

    He said that over time, the elite rigged it so they were mostly or entirely exempt from taxation, so the burden became ever more crushing on the little people.

    Similar thing happened in medieval Iceland, where wealth accumulated to a few rival families, according to Jared Diamond. When harvests were OK, everything was dandy: but when harvests were poor, the less wealthy would borrow from the more wealthy, or sell their cattle or land to the more wealthy, and then rent them back: so more of the wealth accumulated to the already wealthy during hard times. Eventually got to the stage where a handful of families owned most of the property and there was a state of near-civil war as feuds between those wealthy families dragged their client families in with them. Eventually their parliament asked for Norway to take them over.

    As Iceland had no executive arm of government, it’s an interesting counterpoint to gLibertarian fantasies.

  25. 25.

    HyperIon

    July 10, 2012 at 6:12 pm

    It’s this kind of news that makes me happy I declined the defined benefit option and took the manage your own retirement account option whenever it was available.

    State universities used to offer either the state retirement system or TIAA-CREF to new faculty. I feel sorry for those who chose to go the state route. I don’t see how state pensions can be in any better shape than private ones.

  26. 26.

    Mino

    July 10, 2012 at 6:39 pm

    Businesses will be inviting Bain to take them over so they can get rid of their healthcare and pension obligations.

    I think we need a $20.00 minimum wage with employers out of the healthcare and pension business. Let people voluntarily pay more into their SS account. I’d trust that before the casino markets.

  27. 27.

    Mino

    July 10, 2012 at 6:40 pm

    What did I say?

  28. 28.

    pluege

    July 10, 2012 at 7:21 pm

    this is a well proven republican play. In New Jersey, republican Governor Christie Whitman funded tax cuts for the wealthy with reduced state payments required to employees pension. 10 years later the current governor – disgusting pig christie comes along and proclaims the state too broke to pay its pension obligations and unilaterally cuts state pensions. Rope a dope babee.

    No surprise seeing center-right republican obama signing on.

    Anyone making less than $200k/year who votes republican is a complete a*s.

  29. 29.

    pluege

    July 10, 2012 at 7:21 pm

    this is a well proven republican play. In New Jersey, republican Governor Christie Whitman funded tax cuts for the wealthy with reduced state payments required to employees pension. 10 years later the current governor – disgusting pig christie comes along and proclaims the state too broke to pay its pension obligations and unilaterally cuts state pensions. Rope a dope babee.

    No surprise seeing center-right republican obama signing on.

    Anyone making less than $200k/year who votes republican is a complete a*s.

  30. 30.

    TenguPhule

    July 10, 2012 at 7:34 pm

    . And it is more important, they suggest, to avoid giving employers a new reason to limit or jettison remaining pension benefits by forcing them to contribute more than they say they can manage

    Since when do they need a reason other then “Gimme Gimme More!”

    I do not understand the mentality of those who got their pensions stolen and did not track down and brutally slaughter the CEO and others that stole it. I would in their shoes. After all, what else have you to lose at that point?

  31. 31.

    El Cid

    July 10, 2012 at 7:42 pm

    When it came time to hire you, they were only offering $X / hr or $XXk per year of actual pay, in money, but they’d also offer these other alternative forms of pay, such as pension fund contributions.

    Now that you’re working there, though, that wasn’t some incentive in lieu of actual pay, that was a fucking gift and you don’t fucking deserve to receive that entirely voluntary charitable donation from the loving hands of your godlike jobcreator, so, fuck you.

    Serves you right for thinking that you work for pay instead of being given a gift of a job by noble and self-sacrificing deities who make the value of their goods and services appear magically but for some reason have to keep all you worthless eaters around, parasitizing their value.

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