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All of the people who rail against ALL social programs as 'socialism' are now complaining about pensions? I thought we could trust the rich to take care of us? The wealth will trickle down!!
All of the people who rail against ALL social programs as 'socialism' are now complaining about pensions? I thought we could trust the rich to take care of us? The wealth will trickle down!!
So now employer pensions are "social programs" ? LOL at that one.
Remember there used to be 3 legs of retirement funding..pensions, SS and your own savings.
Together they provided a comfortable, stable retirement income.
At the rate change is happening future generations will not be able to retire unless they are fairly wealthy.
No, but putting taxpayers on the hook to keep private pensions solvent certainly would have been.
That's the topic of this thread - people complaining that Obama didn't sign all of us up to foot the bill for insolvent private pensions.
Can you believe it? Some "conservatives" are actually complaining about Obama NOT doing something that would have been socialist.
Blame Congress for not acting sooner. The PBGC has been asking for increased premiums from these employers for nearly 10 years as the annual report to Congress showed declining fund balances.
We have laws on the books about pension funding and they were all ignored and/or waivered.
Typical kick the can down the road.
I think many are missing a point here.
Of course we don't want taxpayers bailing out any pension funds with taxpayer dollars.
But that is where these funds ended up and this is what Congress has told you as they passed this bill.
BUT...this has been known to Congress and the pension trustees for over a decade.
The PBGC gives an annual report to Congress and has repeatedly asked for higher premiums because the PBGC fund itself is underfunded and had to borrow.
In 2000 these funds were over 100% funded; now they are about 40% funded.
No reforms were done by anyone. No increased premiums to the PBGC, no modification of pension plans, NOTHING.
All the people in charge just watched those dwindling numbers each year and did nothing to fix it.
The point is that this is what happens (cuts to pensions including those already receiving pensions) when you let financial problems fester and do nothing about it until you can't ignore it anymore and at that point you can't reform it so you have to make cuts.
Public sector pensions are in the same boat as is social security.
With the changes made to ERISA the way has been paved for these programs to cut everyone's pensions.
And the cry will be "But we'll be broke and we have to do something". Well yeah because you ignored the problem for decades and never made any attempt to fix it so it wouldn't go broke.
Blame Congress for not acting sooner. The PBGC has been asking for increased premiums from these employers for nearly 10 years as the annual report to Congress showed declining fund balances.
We have laws on the books about pension funding and they were all ignored and/or waivered.
Typical kick the can down the road.
Maybe the Congress is not willing to force companies to spend the extra money. They'd probably drop pensions altogether, and made things even worse. Actually that's exactly what my former employer did.
And should the FDIC die too. Is that long overdue? Should we kill all promised to those trusting individuals ? Should savers be given a portion of their money back too because the banks failed? Is that your belief. I disagree vehemently.
The government has no right to steal peoples money through legislation.
This is a great tool for the progressive left to raid bank accounts and it would not surprise me at all.
Pensions are another beast. I agree it is wrong to not honor an agreement with an employee of 30 years or more....but after the crash and after all that wonderful wealth disappeared, the pension funds were in trouble. Investments were made on employees behalf that did not do as well as they should. That is the risk they took with your money. Sad but a fact of life. I don't think a pension fund bailout is going to happen.
Maybe the Congress is not willing to force companies to spend the extra money. They'd probably drop pensions altogether, and made things even worse. Actually that's exactly what my former employer did.
And your solution is a tax hike.
Congress cannot force companies to keep pensions.
Pensions are not guaranteed rights of employees and can be changed, dropped, modified by companies.
I don't know why you'd think otherwise.
The only solution is a tax hike. FICA needs to be increased to cover the costs of SS and medicare.
I wouldn't up the age because 67 is old enough.
Then again..Congress is ignoring it so when the crisis happens all SS payments will be reduced.
The worker earned that benefit and because of that benefit that money was not put into their paycheck but into their pension for them to have a retirement check paid to them each month. Because of my career background I have seen documents stating that each union employee has money invested through their employment.
It is earned and the payment of that was placed there because they joined that union ,paid union dues and attended the meetings. Their employer placed that earned benefit into the pension fund month after month , year after year instead of in their paychecks directly. It is an earned benefit.
Quote:
Originally Posted by HappyTexan
Sure it's earned. But the employee did not contribute to it.
And employer pension funds are never guaranteed and can be changed, ended, modified at any point in time.
So when it was contract negotiation time and the company offered say 75 cents an hour increase and it was decided that we would take 40 cents of that in our paycheck and the other 35 cents be put into our defined benefit pension plan you are claiming that we did not directly contribute. OK, fine. But then let's extend that assumption to defined contribution plans and say that any funds contributed by employers to 401K and other such plans the employee also did not "contribute" and they have no right to expect or assume that those monies will be there for them when they retire.
In the decade prior to my retirement I did attend the annual meeting where representatives of the pension administration came and talked to us about the fund. year after year we were told that it was fully funded through 2049. I recall the year because I would turn 100 then so I believed that I was reasonably certain to have enough income for life. They were telling us even as the number of employees at most of the shops covered under that plan were losing jobs and therefore there was less being contributed by each employee. The shop that I worked in had around 140 employees in my union when I started in 1977. By the time I left in 2004 they were down to just 37. We also were told that they were required, by law, to make sure the funds were rather conservatively invested and were very diversified so that it could not all be put into some crazy, get rich quick scheme.
I'd like to point out that these multi-employer plans were considered more stable than single employer plans and so the contribution that each employer had to make to the PBGC (as insurance against the fund going belly up) was a paltry $13.00 per year, per employee.
I get it that virtually every investor (individuals and groups) took a big hit in the Great Recession created by the bankstas. What I don't get is why not a single person on Wall St. seemed to know that the Mortgage Backed Securites and other instruments really were too good to be true. I think that they did know and perpetrated a massive fraud. I also don't get why those same people, who were supposedly the best and the brightest with MBA degrees from the best schools got massive bonuses after the crash rather than being hauled off to jail, their assets being seized like drug king pins.
If my pension is cut to the max if will be facing a cut of over 83%.
The only tiny bright spot in this for me is that my income will be so low that I will never again pay a penny in income tax. Later today I will contact both the SSA and the pension plan administrators to change my withholding status to cut my withholdings to the minimum. I'm not going to wait until the cut happens.
Maybe the Congress is not willing to force companies to spend the extra money. They'd probably drop pensions altogether, and made things even worse. Actually that's exactly what my former employer did.
And your solution is a tax hike.
Then get rid of the PBGC because employer premiums is how they are funded.
You cannot have your cake and eat it too.
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