----- Original Message ----- From: "JDG" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: "Killer Bs Discussion" <[email protected]> Sent: Thursday, May 12, 2005 10:18 PM Subject: Re: US Pensions
> At 09:51 PM 5/12/2005 -0500, Dan M. wrote: > >> Pardon my > >> bluntness here, but this system is just plain stupid. Or at the very > >> least, stupidly risky. > > > >You know, back when I started working, it wasn't. > > And what happens if the company goes bankrupt? > The pension fund wasn't owned by the company...it was not considered a company asset. The problem was not that the pension obligations went to other creditors (the employees were creditors after all). It was that the company was able to use vodoo ecconomics to fund the pensions. Unfortunately, in the 80s, the US governments stopped insisting on sound accounting practices with pension funds. > >If the money were spent to fund SS instead of paying for part of Bush's tax > >cuts, > > "Paying for tax cuts" is a non-sequitur. It's all income transfer. What happened in reality is that taxes went from slightly progressive to virtually flat above, roughly, a 40k family income. > Social Security is also fully funded this year, so that is a non-sequitur > as well. So, you are saying that Reagan lied to me, but it's no big deal? > > Look at the taxes _and_ the benefits and > > see if, on average, SS is progressive or regressive. > > You're playing word games. No. I just like to look at data. > A poor person making minimum wage is paying a 15.3% tax rate. > > A CEO making $22 million this year is paying a 0.06% tax rate. > That's regressive under anybody's definition of economics. How much does the CEO as a fraction of what he pays? How much does the poor person get? > And oh yeah, that CEO earning $22 million is going to get a taxpayer-funded > check when he retires. And, if he didn't, the poor person would have gotten nothing. Look at how we look to cut Medicaid but expand Medicare. Programs that only favor the poor are on the bottom of the priority list. Dan M. _______________________________________________ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
