I am pretty sure everyone reading HN understands the basic idea of insurance. The issue is your specific claim that "Walmart took out life insurance on its em

I am pretty sure everyone reading HN understands the basic idea of insurance. The issue is your specific claim that "Walmart took out life insurance on its employees because they were betting that their horrible working conditions made people more likely to die than the insurance companies thought. And then were incentivized to make those conditions worse." >...Therefore the only logical reason for Walmart to buy all of those policies is that Walmart believes that it has more information than the insurers on the likelihood that its workers will die. No, as I stated before, all the evidence indicates this was mostly done due to perceived favorable tax treatment: >…Under a typical arrangement, buyers of the insurance pay a fraction of the premium up front and borrow the rest from the insurer. The insurer profits because the interest rate on the loan is higher than the rate of return credited to the buyer on the policy’s cash value. The buying company profits by deducting the interest payments from its taxable income (if eligible to do so under the 2006 law) and because life insurance proceeds are not taxable. Left holding the bag for those profits is Uncle Sam. https://www.cfo.com/tax/2014/01/dead-peasant-insurance-still-alive-corporate-america/ https://www.cfo.com/tax/2014/01/dead-peasant-insurance-still... Of course this could be profitable for a corporation with a large number of workers if it was allowed. Little up-front money, deduct the interest costs and no tax on the death benefit at a time when corporate tax rates were about 35%. The IRS went after these insurance policies and congress also changed the law. The cases against Walmart have been tried about this use of insurance in many jurisdictions and you haven't shown any evidence of Walmart making a business decision based on a calculation that "...their horrible working conditions made people more likely to die than the insurance companies thought".