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To add insult to injury, this is from the April 2019 Stanford law review: "Almost half of all the coal produced in the United States is mined by companies that
by johnnybowman 7y ago
To add insult to injury, this is from the April 2019 Stanford law review:
"Almost half of all the coal produced in the United States is mined by companies that have recently gone bankrupt. This Article explains how those bankruptcy proceedings have undermined federal environmental and labor laws. In particular, coal companies have used the Bankruptcy Code to evade congressionally imposed liabilities requiring that they pay lifetime health benefits to coal miners and restore land degraded by surface mining. Using financial information reported in filings to the Securities and Exchange Commission and in the companies’ reorganization agreements, we show that between 2012 and 2017, four of the largest coal companies in the United States succeeded in shedding almost $5.2 billion of environmental and retiree liabilities."
https://www.stanfordlawreview.org/print/article/bankruptcy-as-bailout/ https://www.stanfordlawreview.org/print/article/bankruptcy-a...
- xenospn 7y agoAnd people still say we need less regulations.
- andrei_says_ 7y agoPropaganda works. People repeat soundbites drilled into their brains by ceaseless repetition.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- baroffoos 7y agoFunny how easy it is for the rich to convince people to work against their best interests.
- kortilla 7y agoThis is one of those sound bites ^! Has it ever occurred to you that some people think complaining about the existence of rich people is not an issue that needs to be “solved” by risking the destruction of an economy that encourages innovation?
- dd36 7y agoYa, the same way Medicare and SS ruined it. What if, instead, security nets amplified risk taking given American culture? I’m told that New Zealand has a huge extreme sport industry because of its generous medical system.
- sitkack 7y agoIf we had strong single-payer, we would see a 100 fold increase in startups. And these startups would self funded and creatively bootstrapped. Without the burden and complexity of securing private health insurance, anyone with a couple months rent saved up could try starting a business. We'd probably even see old people do it. Speaking of which, I'd love to see the temporal evolution of a histogram of ages of founders of all the IPOs in a given year. In a good economy, I bet it would be a fixed density across the spectrum, in an ok economy it might be bimodal and in a poor economy it would be a single peak.
- luckylion 7y ago> Without the burden and complexity of securing private health insurance, anyone with a couple months rent saved up could try starting a business. How expensive is private health insurance in the US? I've seen numbers as low as $6k a year, but from your post it sounds more like $20k a year. I doubt that it would massively increase the amount of startups. We have all that (and more) in Germany, and you don't see companies popping up everywhere, and the ones that are founded are mostly copy cats.
- lotsofpulp 7y agoAt a minimum, for the healthiest young males, health insurance premiums are at least $300 per month with a $3.5k deductible. Older people are in the $600 or more range per month. I would budget $500 per person per month with a $7.5k deductible for a family.
- luckylion 7y ago
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- username90 7y agoActually I think you do. Compare these two systems: European style welfare: Big government which takes care of people so companies don't have to. American style welfare: Small government which doesn't take care of people, but lots of regulations on companies forcing them to provide welfare normally provided by government.
- Joakal 7y agoSimple solution, provide a bond as condition to start. But it won't get implemented, why? It would be in many billions because the bond needs to cover clean up costs, etc. Companies want this risk to be borne by government and indirectly, the population/environment.
- kortilla 7y agoNot really. When coal wasn’t getting crushed by natural gas, cleanup costs for seem mines were easily covered (assuming co2 not priced in as is standard right now).
- adrianN 7y agoIf you start out you won't yet have destroyed a lot of land and you won't have many miners. Just require a fixed amount of money as a bond for every ton of coal produced. This could also cover CO2.
- roenxi 7y agoThe cost of cleanup is in no way linear with the amount of coal being produced; that solution would be complicated and impractical. A better approach is to make the mine operator come up with some sort of remediation plan as part of the approvals process and then insist that they follow it, backed with the threat of massive fines. Se a standard so that remediation has to be ongoing or commence before the economic phase of extraction is over (to prevent bankruptcy from being a rational out). That does front-load the costs and so push out smaller operators from starting mines; but that is pretty much inevitable when tightening environmental standards. If the goal is to force a company to do something that isn't economically rational, a determined regulator is a reasonable way.
- maxxxxx 7y agoMaybe environmental and retirement liabilities should be treated like student loans so you can't escape from them in bankruptcy?
- onlyrealcuzzo 7y agoCompanies shouldn't be allowed to offer pensions. They also should be forced to fund government mandated liabilities. Companies don't have a good track record of lasting more than 60 years. It's only a matter of time before they go bankrupt. And when bankruptcy is a way of shedding your pension obligations, they'll go out of their way to go bankrupt to shed it.
- maxxxxx 7y agoI guess it would be better if there were independent pension funds that are regulated accordingly.
- dev_dull 7y agoSuch as an employee sponsored 401k?
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- maxxxxx 7y agoI wouldn't mind a defined pension. It's easier to plan for and also I think more efficient. With a 401k you have to save up a boatload of money just in case. If you live too long you may run out of money, if you don't live long, then you have a lot of money left. So it seems to me that it would be better to average it out over a lot of people. Pretty much the same as with health insurance where one people will need more, some people will need less so it's better to average out out over a large number of people.
- seanmcdirmid 7y ago
- dwaltrip 7y agoWhere on the bankruptcy hierarchy of financial obligations do environmental liabilities fall? I would think they should be higher priority than shareholders and debt holders.
- bluGill 7y agoshareholders are generally last. I'm not sure how debt compares though.
- wz1000 7y agoThis is why limited liability is a terrible idea, just another way to privatize the gains and socialize the losses. When you buy a stake in a corporation(especially one that comes with voting rights), and the corporation goes on to cause damages to life, property, the environment etc, you should be held personally liable in proportion with your share(or voting share). I can see the argument for limited liability in case of debts: the issuer of the debt has the opportunity to do due diligence and take the risk of bankruptcy into account. But in the case of damages, I don't see how limited liability can ever be justified.
- mars4rp 7y agoLet's hold the officers of a company liable first. Then go after shareholders.
- luckylion 7y agoWhy not both? The management acts on behalf of the shareholders. If they break the law, go after the officers with criminal charges, and make the shareholders liable financially. It'll make management less short-term/risk-loving and shareholders will pick their management much more carefully.
- _pmf_ 7y ago> go after the officers with criminal charges, and make the shareholders liable financially Even if the officers serve a prison term and forfeit all personal fortune, companies will still put them on some comfortable position (pre-bribing other officers as a side effect) after they get out.
- pjc50 7y agoWe've had limited liability for centuries, and it's completely critical for getting people to invest in businesses. Without it, nobody dares open anything larger than a lemonade stand, unless they're already extremely wealthy.
- 7y ago
- sitkack 7y agoCapitalism is such a wicked mind.
- skookumchuck 7y agoThe old bankruptcy procedure simply halted operations and sold off the assets. The new procedure allows the company to continue operating under the direction of a judge. A judge, of course, knows nothing about running a business. Worse, it allows the people running the company to strip its assets for their personal gain.
- Cthulhu_ 7y agoIf a company can escape their (financial, environmental, social) responsibilities by filing for bankruptcy before they have to pay out, they should be paying it forward. In my country, pension funds are always separate companies from the employers; they have to deposit part of your wage into the pension fund, after which they can no longer touch it (because well, it's your money). Of course, whether the pension companies handle it appropriately is another matter.
- lordnacho 7y agoThe example you're looking for is insurance, where it's an obvious problem. You can't just open an insurance company, take people's premium payments, and then go broke when there's a claim. But for other companies, normal limited liability bankruptcy is the default solution. Nobody thought coal companies would be a special risk in the sense of having liabilities way after their income. It's like if you invent an ice cream that turns out to give people cancer in 20 years, there's no recourse beyond what money the company has at that time.
- XorNot 7y agoI mean this really happened though: asbestos was exactly this problem.
- lordnacho 7y agoYeah agreed. Not clear what the solution is though. It's a bit blunt to just not allow limited liability, which is useful for a lot of things. But then what do you do instead?
- madez 7y agoWe must internalize the costs. 1) People must be held responsible for their actions no matter if it's in their free time or at work. You do it, you are responsible for it. 2) Those that give unlawful tasks to others as their boss must personally be held responsible no matter whether the task actually got implemented, or not. 3) The investors of avtivities must personally be held responsible for the activities they fund. It's their responsibility to know what they are funding.
- jillesvangurp 7y agoIf someone ever figures out a class action suit to represent people living near coal plants that are suffering from (or have died from) the side effects of living in a polluted area, it's going to be pretty much game over for the coal industry. At this point they can't really claim ignorance. Bringing this up because class action suits are quite common in the US and have also caused a lot of trouble for e.g. the tobacco industry. The case for continuing to kill people with smog is pretty weak and cleaning up remaining plants is not going to make operating them any cheaper. It's also a great argument against building more (although entirely redundant considering the economics of coal in general).
- throwayEngineer 7y agoCorporations are one of the worst laws in human history. Letting people be separate from the company they own has caused a century of irresponsibility.