Corporate America's Plan to Loot Our Pensions Is the Latest Battle in Decades-Long Assault

[ProudDad]

Corporate America's Plan to Loot Our Pensions Is the Latest Battle in Decades-Long Assault on the Middle Class

While the safety net is being withered by attrition, record corporate profits are deemed off-limits for discussion about closing the budget gap.

The severe economic crisis, now in its fourth year, is being used to batter the remnants of the social welfare state. Having decimated aid to the poor over the last 30 years, especially in the United States, the economic and political elite are now intent on strangling middle-class benefits, namely state-provided pensions, health care and education.

The initial neoliberal assault under Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher reorganized the capitalist economy and hammered private-sector unions into submission. This was accomplished by putting labor back into competition with itself by off-shoring industrial production, through deregulation and with frontal assaults on labor rights, organizing and solidarity.

Similarly, the current attack is a two-pronged effort to reorganize state social services, either by eliminating or privatizing them, and decimate public-sector unions whose workers provide those services. While the safety net is being withered by attrition, police and spying agencies are getting more powers and funding, and the wealth of the super-rich and record corporate profits are deemed off-limits to taxation to close any government budget gap.

http://www.alternet.org/story/149226/corporate_america%27s_plan_to_loot_our_pensions_is_the_latest_battle_in_decades-long_assault_on_the_middle_class_

[msongs]

1. dems + republicans + president - mission soon to be accomplished nt

[ProudDad]

2. Kick, Kick, Kick a thousand times Kick

[quaker bill]

3. This started a long time ago

The defined benefit pension for the private sector began being replaced by the 401K during the Reagan Administration. The point of this was to take responsibility from the employer for retirement security, and to place the interest of the worker in the same boat as the investor and CEO, but it had a far larger effect.

By creating the 401K as a tax advantaged account, many restrictions were placed on it. The money must stay in the market and can only be moved from one asset class to another a limited number of times a year. This makes these funds a ripe target for plunder by speculators. In short the private sector funds for retirement security have already been served up to the rich on a silver platter.

For the wealthy speculators, having already feasted on private retirement assets and real estate equity, the public retirement funds and social security are the remaining bits meat that remain on this American carcas. The OP is correct that this is the next battle, and the last battle, because this the only significant asset left. There are still trillions left unconsumed, and they would like to get at this stash before they leave.

The best bit is the argument "the private sector does not provide this benefit so why should anyone else have it". My paternal grandfather did brake jobs for a living, his wife did not work, he bought a house, raised a family, owned occasional new cars, owned stock in the company he worked for under an ESOP, and had a pension, bought a another small house with cash and retired to Florida. When they passed, I inherited the leftovers, not a huge sum, but there was something left. In short, the private sector used to provide salaries and benefits like this just fine, and could do so again, there would just be far fewer $300 million dollar salaries for CEO types.

The private sector did business just fine like this for decades, then came Reagan, supply side tax cuts, free trade, and the 401K. No one doing brake jobs for a living can manage a life even remotely like this anymore. This is where conservatives have taken us, and it was intentional.

[rasputin1952]

4. Reagan stoked the fires of class warfare...

and those that were unarmed...like 95% of the nation, were on the losing end.

The GOP tells people they will be wealthy if they work hard and spend...but they have gone to great lengths to ensure that citizens never get to the ranks of the wealthy. The "privileged" class see themselves a "above" us mere mortals. However, occasionally, by a combination of factors, occasionally someone like Bill Gates or George Soros make it, but they are vilified immediately as "socialists" and "upstarts" while the GOP caters to the Koch brothers and other families that will do their bidding.

The policies of Reagan started the flood of cash out of the hands of workers and produced a "gush up" economy...the only thing that "trickled down" was the drool of the people that stole pensions and savings and the urine of the ultra wealthy...bathing us in a nasty mix of fluids.

Soon, there will be an uprising against these leeches, and I'll be out there with those who fight for justice and equality; I want to see the thieves and miscreants rotting in prison, fed nothing but thin gruel and their property divided to help the poor and starving.

[ProudDad]

6. "This is where conservatives have taken us"

And the current pResident has apparently signed on and continued the agenda...

Have you read Robert Reich's latest book?

Within his limitation of considering the Earth an infinite source of resources and energy his critique of the last 30+ years of robbing from the poor to give to the rich is spot on...!!

My grandfather "did brake jobs" too. He was a mechanic and was the first employee of the Lockheed Brothers when they began their hydraulic brake company, installing custom built brake systems on rich person's cars one at a time, my grandfather did the design and installation work...

He had a stack of patents for his inventions, including the dual-master cylinder, for which he was allowed to keep his job and get a salary while the corporation kept all of the royalties...

[quaker bill]

7. My Granddad

worked for Lockheed, I think, during WWII doing hydraulics on fighter aircraft. He went from there to Buick, and was on the Buick pit crew for the 1937 Indy 500. But for the most part did brake jobs for a dealership.

This President has appointed a pro-labor Secretary of Labor, and opposes private accounts for Social Security. The notion that he has fully signed on to the agenda is not supported by his actions.

[mikekohr]

5. Bush attempted to convert all remaining defined benefit plans to "Cash Balance" plans

but was thwarted by loss of the Senate to Democratic control. My former employer, UPS, had indicated they planed to convert my defined benefit plan to a cash balance plan in which I stood to lose 55-60% of the value of my pension, thanks to proposed changes coming from the George W. Bush administration.

All those douche bags out there that think there is no differance between the two parties should look to this as an example of just how differant the two parties are. Had the Democrats not regained control of Congress, Bush would have got his way, and I'd be working until I dropped dead.