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Retirement

Can We Ever Retire To Greater Equality?

June 22, 2022 Sam Pizzigati, Inequality.org. , , ,
Do you have a good pension? Do you have any pension at all? Back in 1975, most Americans who worked for established employers could say that they do indeed have a decent pension. Back then, what the experts call “defined-benefit” pension plans set the standard. If you worked for a company with one of these plans, you could look forward to receiving — for every month of your retired life — a pension check based on your salary and years of service. These defined-benefit plans gave employers the responsibility for funding their employee retirements. Employers contributed into retirement funds and used the investment returns these funds generated to keep pension checks flowing. If those returns came up short, employers had to fill the shortfall.

Even Amid Give-Back Demands, Workers Can Still Safeguard Pensions

September 12, 2021 Steve Early, LA Progressive. , , ,
In recent decades, a top management priority has been reducing the cost of retirement benefits. The pandemic and its economic fallout have generated a new round of employer demands for pension freezes, benefit cuts, plan conversions, and two-tier coverage.  The Labor Guide to Retirement Plans  (Monthly Review Press), a newly published book by Oregon union activist Jim Russell, shows why and how private and public sector workers should be mobilizing against such concessions. This book will be a critical resource for defending retirement security at the bargaining table and in the political arena. The Labor Guide is not only a highly readable account of retirement plan financing and administration, with a handy glossary of layperson explanations of sometimes confusing technical terms.

Workers Are Funding The War On Themselves

July 12, 2021 David Sirota, The Daily Poster. , , ,
As the private equity industry launches ads to protect its lucrative tax preferences, we should remember that this industry is the unseen man behind the curtain driving many social ills — from high hospital prices to surprise medical bills to nursing home deaths to media layoffs to a housing crisis that has become a human rights emergency. A *Businessweek* cover put it best: You live in private equity’s world, even if you don’t know it. But a series of new reports remind us that there is another person behind the monocled, mustache-twirling oligarch running the Emerald City’s secret control panel — and that person isn’t a billionaire. It is the faceless pension official in a state capital or city hall who is using workers’ retirement savings to finance the Wall Street takeover of Oz.

Teamsters Spent Seven Years Fighting For Their Pensions

March 16, 2021 Jeff Bollier, Green Bay Gazette. , , ,
Green Bay, WI - For the first time in seven years, thousands of Wisconsin Teamsters don't have to worry about their pensions being cut in half.   The American Rescue Plan, which President Joe Biden signed into law on Thursday, included the Butch Lewis Emergency Pension Plan Relief Act of 2021. The act directs the Pension Guaranty Benefit Corp. to allocate billions of dollars to avoid the drastic cuts.  The act will shore up the Central States Pension Fund, a multi-employer fund for 1.3 million retired Teamsters, 23,500 of whom live in Wisconsin. About 3,400 members live in the Eighth Congressional District, which includes Green Bay and Appleton. Failure to act would have dealt a huge blow to those retirees who gave up wages to keep their retirement funds, and who have come to depend on payments to survive, said Brad Vaughn, a member of the Wisconsin/Green Bay Committee to Protect Pensions. 

Retirement Shouldn’t Mean Poverty

July 26, 2019 By Katherine Newman, Otherwords.org , ,
Vivian Majors spent her life cleaning houses while her husband, Martin, worked as a carpenter. Their bodies broke down in their 60s. Martin now lives in a nursing home and has Parkinson’s disease. Vivian, now 71, lives on her own and ekes by on a $960 in social security, plus $50 in food stamps. Hardened by years of physically taxing work that left her hovering around the poverty line, Majors, now retired, is girding herself for more years of financial hardship.

Thousands Of Retired Workers In Spain Demand ‘Decent Pensions’

December 18, 2018 Staff, Telesurenglish.net , , ,
Thousands of retired people and supporters took over the streets in several cities in Spain on Saturday to demand “decent” pensions of at least 1,080 Euros a month, and yearly updates according, to the Consumer Price Index (CPI). The protests started in Bilbao, capital of the Basque country, in January as a weekly demonstration and spread to over 200 cities and towns across the Spanish State, supporting other movements along the way. They were organized by the State Coordinator for the Defense of the Public Pension System under the slogans “whoever is ruling, pensions must be defended,” and “Our future: there’s no solution without mobilization!”

Social Security Trustees Report Shows We Should Expand Retirement Benefits

June 7, 2018 By Monique Morrissey, Epi.org ,
There’s no real news in the Social Security trustees report released this afternoon. We’re now a year closer to the date the trust fund will be exhausted, 2034 (same as last year’s projection), at which point current revenues will still be sufficient to cover 77 percent of benefits even if nothing is done to shore up the system’s finances. Each year, the release of the trustees report provides an occasion for Social Security scaremongering by those wanting to shrink our social insurance system. But not only can we afford current benefits, we can afford to expand them. The average retired worker beneficiary receives an annual benefit of $16,933. Disability and survivor benefits are even more modest.

Almost Half Of Americans Die Nearly Broke

June 5, 2017 Maurie Backman, www.usatoday.com , ,
By Maurie Backman for USA Today - In a recent GoBankingRates study, 69% of adults admitted to having less than $1,000 in the bank, while 34% said they actually don't have any savings at all. But apparently, this collective lack of savings doesn't get all that much better with age. A study by the National Bureau of Economic Research found not so long ago that almost half of Americans die nearly broke. Of the general population, 46% of retirees die with savings of $10,000 or less. But that number climbs to 57% among retirees who are single. Now when we take other assets, like homes, into account, the picture gets a bit less bleak. Still, 57% of single-adult households and 50% of widowed households had no housing equity to show for when they died. The problem is that dying nearly broke isn't just a matter of denying one's beneficiaries an inheritance. Rather, it points to a frightening degree of financial vulnerability during retirement. If seniors are passing without much in the way of assets, it means that in the years leading up to their death, they're ill equipped to handle a major unexpected expense, such as a significant medical bill. In fact, in that same GoBankingRates survey, only 37% of seniors 65 and older claimed to have $1,000 or more in the bank.

Brazil Paralyzed By Nationwide Strike Against Corruption & Impunity

April 30, 2017 Glenn Greenwald, www.theintercept.com , , , , , ,
By Glenn Greenwald for the Intercept. It’s almost impossible to imagine a presidency imploding more completely and rapidly than the unelected one imposed by elites on the Brazilian population in the wake of Dilma’s impeachment. The disgust validly generated by all of these failures finally exploded this week. A nationwide strike, and tumultuous protests in numerous cities, today has paralyzed much of the country, shutting roads, airports and schools. It is the largest strike to hit Brazil in at least two decades. The protests were largely peaceful, but some random violence emerged. The proximate cause of the anger is a set of “reforms” that the Temer government is ushering in that will limit the rights of workers, raise their retirement age by several years, and cut various pension and social security benefits. These austerity measures are being imposed at a time of great suffering, with the unemployment rate rising dramatically and social improvements of the last decade, which raised millions of people out of poverty, unravelling. As the New York Times put it today: “The strike revealed deep fissures in Brazilian society over Mr. Temer’s government and its policies.”

Trump’s ‘Jobs Czar’ Defeats Workers After 105 Day Strike

February 26, 2017 Dominic Rushe and Tom Pietrasik, www.theguardian.com , , ,
By Dominic Rushe and Tom Pietrasik for the Guardian. Momentive’s workers are not alone in their grievances. In 2016 dollars, the average hourly wage of a high school educated worker was $18.29 in 1973, according to the Economic Policy Institute. Last year it was $17.25. Ignoring minor bumps and dips, it’s fair to say that a quarter of the US workforce (those with no more than high school education) have seen their wages barely keep up with inflation for more than 40 years – a period that enjoyed decades of spectacular economic growth, particularly for the top 1%. Chatting over a beer after a day on the lines, Benny Patrignani, Dominick’s brother, says he has hope that Trump will bring change. “Both parties are so busy hitting each other, they haven’t been interested in us,” he says. The choice, he said, was: “Do you want to die by drowning or die by fire?”

Retirement Divide: 100 CEOs V. The Rest Of Us

December 19, 2016 Sarah Anderson, www.ips-dc.org , , , ,
By Sarah Anderson for IPS - If President-elect Donald Trump succeeds in cutting the top marginal tax rate from 39.6 percent to 33 percent, Fortune 500 CEOs would save $196 million on the income taxes they would owe if they withdrew their tax-deferred funds. Unlike ordinary 401(k) holders, most top CEOs have no limits on annual contributions to their tax-deferred accounts. In 2015 alone, Fortune 500 CEOs saved $92 million on their taxes by putting $238 million more in these accounts than they could have if they were subject to the same rules as other workers.

Retirees Win Round One

June 2, 2016 Alexandra Bradbury, www.labornotes.org ,
By Alexandra Bradbury for Labor Notes - Who could have predicted a year ago, as Congress-sanctioned pension cutsgathered momentum, that thousands of retired truckers self-organizing in diners and union halls across Middle America would manage to apply the brakes? “We’ve taken just normal, everyday grandmothers and grandfathers, and we’ve made citizen lobbyists out of them,” said Wes Epperson, a retired member of Teamsters Local 41 in Kansas City, “and it’s been because of necessity.”

Sharing Economy Will Screw, Real Problem Retirement

May 19, 2016 Steven Hill, www.alternet.org , ,
By Steven Hill for Beacon Press - Meet Howard and Jean, an older couple I know, who like so many Americans of the “greatest generation” plugged into the New Deal world that promised a secure lunch pail for the middle class. Howard is a World War II veteran who became a mechanic; when he was younger he worked on automobiles for a local Chevy dealership, and then on commercial airliners for United Airlines out at the airport. Jean was a housewife and part-time sales clerk.

The Reality Of Retirement Inequality In The United States

May 7, 2016 Ben Steverman, www.bloomberg.com , ,
By Ben Steverman for Bloomberg - Since voluntary savings plans led by 401(k)s have largely replaced traditional pensions, it’s probably no surprise that this is the best of times for many highly paid workers. Equally unsurprising is that this is the worst of times for almost everyone else, especially the 42 percent (PDF) of workers who don’t have access to a work-sponsored plan. The stunner is just how much the luckiest among us will outpace the unluckiest on retirement day: eleven times as much.

Retirement Co-op Ensures Seniors Aren’t Treated As Commodities

March 27, 2016 Sophie Chapelle, www.truthout.org , ,
By Sophie Chapelle (translated by Leslie Thatcher) for Truthout. Lyon, France - They didn't want to end up in a traditional retirement home. They wanted to remain the actors in their own lives. Seven years after their first discussions about how to age well, a group of retired people is starting to build the first co-op for the aging. Non-speculation, democracy and environmental concern are the foundations of the "Chamarel-Les Barges" project, located in a neighborhood of Vaulx-en-Velin, east of Lyon, France. The project is so inspiring that the bank has even conferred a 50-year loan to the founders, who are in their 60s. The rendezvous was set for the 15th floor in a Vaulx-en-Velin apartment building in the suburbs of Lyon. That's the location for the headquarters of the Chamarel Association (also known as the Residents' Cooperative Housing Residence of East Lyonnais) created in 2010, prompted by the first French co-op for older people.
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