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Then corporate America changed: Union membership waned. Executive boards, under pressure from financial raiders, focused more intently on maximizing stock price

by dsr_ 9y ago

Then corporate America changed: Union membership waned. Executive boards, under pressure from financial raiders, focused more intently on maximizing stock prices. ... Exactly what led corporate America away from pensions is a matter of debate among scholars, but there is little question that they seem destined for extinction, at least in the private sector. Oh, please. Nobody seriously debates this, the answer is right there. The policy of the federal government, since Reagan, has been to bust the power of unions every chance they get. Just look at the decisions of the NLRB before and after Reagan. Labor lost power, corporations gained it. First pensions were reduced, then deliberately underfunded, then raided, then eliminated. The government went along with all of that.

zackmorris 9y ago
I second this. We have access to vastly more powerful technology than in 1980 and the GDP of most developed countries is many times what it used to be. We should all be earning at least twice what we did, and we should be working fewer hours, with more benefits. The retirement age should be 60 or even 55 today, maybe younger, and social security should have kept up with inflation to pay more. All of this would have happened with unions and deciding in favor of labor whenever possible. Instead we did the opposite, and here we are in an unsustainable class war with the ugliest aspects of our past coming back to haunt us. I am all for ending labor as we know it and letting machines do most of the work. But humans must still be in charge, not capital/corporations/sociopaths/liars/lobbyists and so on.
- toomuchtodo 9y ago
  I'm going to keep beating this drum: organize and vote.
dreamcompiler 9y ago
What you say is correct, but pensions are inherently risky to companies. There are two prime sources of risk: The stock market and retiree statistics. If either turns south, the company is required to make up the difference, which can cause smaller companies to fold. When both the stock market and retiree statistics were stable, companies were happy to provide pensions. But both (especially the stock market) are too volatile nowadays for pension plans to be viable. The only solution now is for the federal government to cover the unpredictability of planning for retirement.

by dsr_ 9y ago

zackmorris 9y ago

I second this. We have access to vastly more powerful technology than in 1980 and the GDP of most developed countries is many times what it used to be. We should all be earning at least twice what we did, and we should be working fewer hours, with more benefits. The retirement age should be 60 or even 55 today, maybe younger, and social security should have kept up with inflation to pay more. All of this would have happened with unions and deciding in favor of labor whenever possible. Instead we did the opposite, and here we are in an unsustainable class war with the ugliest aspects of our past coming back to haunt us. I am all for ending labor as we know it and letting machines do most of the work. But humans must still be in charge, not capital/corporations/sociopaths/liars/lobbyists and so on.

toomuchtodo 9y ago
I'm going to keep beating this drum: organize and vote.

dreamcompiler 9y ago

What you say is correct, but pensions are inherently risky to companies. There are two prime sources of risk: The stock market and retiree statistics. If either turns south, the company is required to make up the difference, which can cause smaller companies to fold. When both the stock market and retiree statistics were stable, companies were happy to provide pensions. But both (especially the stock market) are too volatile nowadays for pension plans to be viable. The only solution now is for the federal government to cover the unpredictability of planning for retirement.