Does Private SS = End of Company pension programs? Yes or No?

[MichiganVote]

[indepat]

1. It will likely be the beginning of the end

[mopinko]

2. what company pensions?

401k's already killed them.

[tk2kewl]

3. exactly

[Johonny]

5. yip

it's dead already

[Vincardog]

4. Crooked companies = End of Company pension programs

The crooked bastards have been buying companies stealing their pension plans and going bankrupt to avoid the liability. Stop the Fraud

[amazona]

6. company pension programs are gone anyway

Who has a company pension these days? Even if you were promised one, well, ask the airline employees how that worked out -- and they have unions!

Private SS means nothing more and nothing less than old people on the street begging for food or else living in the basement with their children. As I've said before, the only guy who will have those jobs being a greeter at WalMart will be the guy who is good buddies of the person doing the hiring.

Without Social Security, the classic three-legged plan of Social Security, company pension, and personal savings is down to one leg, and a chair can't stand on one leg. If you saved 10 percent of your net income for 10 years, you would then have enough money to live on for one year in retirement -- and this assumes no transaction or investment fees, no inflation, etc. People who think you can get enough through private investment plans are young people who have not experienced the ups and downs of what happens to your investment. They are too young to have experienced risk. They do not understand that "risk" means "risk" -- that you have a good-sized chance of losing. They fantasize that they can only win. Someone needs to tie them down and make them spend a few days at a dice table. Then they would find out that repeated trades minus an insignificant transaction fee -- the casino "vig" on the pass line is only 1.4 percent! -- means that in good time you end up with nothing. And the more actively you trade and manage your money, the faster the end comes.

It's called "Churning."

All private savings/investment does is provide a little extra bonus money in old age. You wonder about people sometimes. Can't they see from their own attempts at savings how well it works? Most people don't have any savings. They have only debt. This is because for most people, hello, savings don't work. You can't have children and educate them and have retirement savings and have a period of ill health unless you are quite high income. Those numbers just don't crunch.

The conservation movement is a breeding ground of communists
and other subversives. We intend to clean them out,
even if it means rounding up every birdwatcher in the country.
--John Mitchell, US Attorney General 1969-72

[VOX]

7. Yes. Along with employer-paid healthcare. It's all going...

Part of the "ownership society." Whatever it is, it's your problem -- you "own" it -- and you're on your own. :grr:

[El Supremo]

8. What about company heath insurance plans?

Retirement plans are already dead. I lost mine in 1986.

Don't forget that Medicare is part of the SS Administration. And that the Neocons hate it too.

[MichiganVote]

10. We're going to own them, like the bridge in Brooklyn

[EVDebs]

9. It's all about Globalization. Strip employees of any pensions/healtcare

and outsource the jobs and profits. The CEOs and Wall Street cream it 'churn'-fashion and once all the little people are out of work, well, they'll just start selling short and hit the hedge funds !

[necso]

11. Private pensions

(and government "pensions") for regular folks, not the elite, are on their way out -- at least if the neocons and their fellow travelers have their say in the matter.

Businesses are in a vicious cycle of looking to reduce costs by reducing the costs of employing workers (they would love to get rid of their portion of the SS tax), as opposed to improving efficiency, moving into new technology or making other improvements.

Squeezing workers is easy to do, it is easy to understand and it is easy to "quantify" on the bottom line (which makes it easy to pass out huge chunks of the "savings" to the "masterminds"). -- Of course, the end result of all this shallow "thinking" may be the hollowing out of the American economy and its consumer base. But concern for the future has fallen out of vogue. The next quarter, or maybe the next year, is about as far as our "great minds" are looking ahead (except for plans to do more of the same crap in the future.)

Expect about as much good from our corporate "leadership" as from the neocons. (There are some exceptions.) -- Unenlightened self interest drives them both.

And SS privatization is just one part of the plan. -- The beauty of this part of the plan is that with it, workers would be paying taxes directly to corporate interests and the insider elite (in the form of fees -- and, potentially, of one's entire nest egg). You almost have to admire the bold-faced effrontery of it. (But just almost.)

[Coastie for Truth]

12. Yes.

Pensions

1. "Defined Benefit" Pension plans are history - pretty much a long range effect of the collapse of steel in the 1980's, the near-death of Chrysler in the 1980's, IBM's move away in 1998, and the airlines' problems.

2. "Defined Contribution" Pension plans - as in 401(k) - still here. But I am pessimistic.

Employer Paid Health Insurance

1. Smaller employer contributions ==Larger employee contributions.

2. Bush's next thing "Health Care Savings Accounts" - just means bigger deductibles and co-pays on your employer paid health insurance. But you will be ables to tax shelter or deduct some of your co-pays and deductibles.

Employer Paid Post Retirement Health Insurance (Medi-Gap)

1. Gone - with defined benefit pension plans.

Safety Of Your 401(k) Assets

1. GOP is making noises to reign in Bill Lerach, NY AG Spitzer, CA AG Lockyer.

Ladies and Gentlemen - Girls and Boys - Bush and company are taking us back to the "Gilded Age" before either of the Roosevelts.

[MichiganVote]

13. Absolutely. I have noticed the similarities

[Coastie for Truth]

14. I think those of us from the Rust Belt

knew that without some good old fashion "AFL-CIO" "Democratic" "New Deal" action (before it was too late) health insurance, income maintenance, post-retirement income (if we even could retire), and post-retirement health care would all be history.

We knew that things were bad when Chrysler almost died, and we knew things were bad in the auto industry, and we knew things were bad when steel finally died.

And the GOP has had the Presidency 2/3's of this critical time, and tied up Clinton in "frivolous investigations" the other 1/3 of the time.

And the GOP has just played favorites -- and this comboy has embroiled us in 200 BILLION dollar "Wars of Choice" - driven up the debt and the deficit- and given ever bigger tax breaks to his rich friends.

[MichiganVote]

16. And its pretty clear that the main company we have all worked for

the USA, is about to pimp us again.

[librechik]

15. they want to remove both from the benefits menu

and slim it down to the lash, the jailcell and the gutter for all us losers. Of course, we could join the Pukkkes in the throne room--with the right parents and utter willingness to sell your soul.

It's a multilateral attack. While they have us distracted by social security, they slip behind and gut our mensiona and medicare.