Angry Ferret
May. 10th, 2005 10:41 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
forsythThis is fucking disgusting. United is like the upteenth big company to dump their pension funds in the past few years. The CEOs of these companies are breaking promises that they made to their employees, and their employees paid into for years, and for what? Generally, for their own profit. The CEOs always walk away with fat benefits and salaries, because they "turned a failing company around" by cutting costs such as workers benefits and employees. That's fucking disgusting. And they do this, in United's case, while receiving billions of dollars of government subsidies, contracts, and loans. Why is the government rewarding these companies for breaking their promises? And now the government is going to pick up the costs of the pensions, at reduced rates of course. And of course, they bitch and moan like crazy if there's any specter of government regulation or intervention, playing up the "free market". Some free market, when they fly from government built airports, using government built infrastructure, through publicly owned airspace, and using public airwaves for control, with plenty of public subsidies of direct cash. Did I mention it's fucking disgusting?
But you know what? If they want to turn over pensions to the government, I actually think that's a good idea. They want to ditch their expensive health care promises? Give those to the government, too. It'd probably work better. Well, almost certainly work better. And be cheaper. See, we start by taxing the companies at some amount to pay for the pensions and health care. Due to economies of scale and the enormous bargaining power the government would have with universal pension and health care programs, it's nearly certain to be cheaper than what the companies were paying before. And people wouldn't lose their health care or pension when they switched jobs, which would make people more able to try new jobs and get out of the job they hate but keep for the benefits. And the companies could eliminate all their pension and health care bureaucracy. Yes, the government would create new bureaucracy, but there'd be much less duplication of effort, so it'd probably be more efficient.
I mean, the basics are already in place, we have Social Security, which is basically a pension fund, it'd just have to be expanded. And expand Medicare and Medicaid, or the kinds of health programs the government already has for government workers. The pension plan, too. Companies would be more competitive, people wouldn't be robbed of the pensions they'd contributed to because the company decides they need to "streamline" or lose some "liabilities".
And no, that's not "communist", "socialist", or anything of the sort. If I wanted to go that way, I could suggest the whole "citizen's wage" idea, or maybe "citizen's dividend", where the government gives everybody some money, because we're all stockholders in America, so we should get some dividends for our stockholding, no?
Expect to see more about this whole basic idea in a post I was actually working on when I saw the news there, about the false dichotomy between security and opportunity.
Tags: Politics, Mindscribbles, Links, News, Rants
But you know what? If they want to turn over pensions to the government, I actually think that's a good idea. They want to ditch their expensive health care promises? Give those to the government, too. It'd probably work better. Well, almost certainly work better. And be cheaper. See, we start by taxing the companies at some amount to pay for the pensions and health care. Due to economies of scale and the enormous bargaining power the government would have with universal pension and health care programs, it's nearly certain to be cheaper than what the companies were paying before. And people wouldn't lose their health care or pension when they switched jobs, which would make people more able to try new jobs and get out of the job they hate but keep for the benefits. And the companies could eliminate all their pension and health care bureaucracy. Yes, the government would create new bureaucracy, but there'd be much less duplication of effort, so it'd probably be more efficient.
I mean, the basics are already in place, we have Social Security, which is basically a pension fund, it'd just have to be expanded. And expand Medicare and Medicaid, or the kinds of health programs the government already has for government workers. The pension plan, too. Companies would be more competitive, people wouldn't be robbed of the pensions they'd contributed to because the company decides they need to "streamline" or lose some "liabilities".
And no, that's not "communist", "socialist", or anything of the sort. If I wanted to go that way, I could suggest the whole "citizen's wage" idea, or maybe "citizen's dividend", where the government gives everybody some money, because we're all stockholders in America, so we should get some dividends for our stockholding, no?
Expect to see more about this whole basic idea in a post I was actually working on when I saw the news there, about the false dichotomy between security and opportunity.
Tags: Politics, Mindscribbles, Links, News, Rants
