A report released Thursday from the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) offers more evidence that the shift away from traditional pensions to 401(k)-like plans contributes to inequality.
As Bloomberg reported Friday, "The U.S. retirement landscape is starting to look like a Charles Dickens novel."
Neoliberal austerity economics. When the wages of the maiority falls as the cost of goods continues to rise for fifteen years running, that is a recession or a form of legal robbery. Vote Hillary for more of the same.
āHer current views on the issue, Max Ehrenfreund wrote last week at the Washington Post, reflect a shift towards the left, more in line with Sandersā view.ā
Which sheāll hold onto as long as her other campaign rhetoric.
Clinton was effusive in her praise for Greek austerity measures.
"At the news conference, held with the Greek foreign minister, Stavros Lambrinidis, she praised the determination of the government to impose a raft of austerity measures that Parliament approved last month amid violent street protests. She described the initiatives as āvital first steps and acts of leadership.ā
Comparing the measures to ābitter medicineā and āthe chemotherapy to get rid of the cancer,ā she emphasized that the price of inaction would have been much higher."
In Athens, Clinton Praises Greece for Tackling Its Debt
What were Greeceās austerity measures?
Selling off government assets/privatizing, reductions in social programs & benefits, and pension cuts.
If Clinton gets into the White House you can expect talk (and action) about āsavingā Social Security through benefit cuts. Sheās not going to raise the cap on income like Sanders has proposed. She going to be a neoliberal who gets things done. Things like the Greeks did.
You seniors and soon-to-be seniors who support Clinton are cutting your own throats.
Going to be a neoliberal? So, to date sheās been what?
"Hillary Clinton said
last month that ā[Republicans] are calling Social Security a Ponzi
scheme and want to privatize it,ā while both she and Democratic rival
Bernie Sanders āwant to make sure Social Security is vibrant and
well-funded.ā āHer current views on the issue, Max Ehrenfreund wrote last week at the Washington Post, reflect a shift towards the left, more in line with Sandersā view.ā
The key here is āHer current views on the issue.ā Even the corporate medial lairs, canāt hide how she changes position on everything. That sociopath Clinton will say and do anything for whatever reasons she has. I canāt even gather what her reasons are?
Keep in mind that many of those defined pension plans go broke and will not have the money needed to pay the pensions they obligated to pay to retirees.
Governments and Corporations both are reneging on these obligations and monies people counted on for retirement will not be there.
Thanks Ronald Regan for that huge giveaway to Banks and Corporations. The propaganda machine is so good that most of the ignorant masses donāt realize that his policies were for the rich and laid the foundation for the destruction of the middle class. He spent more government money than any president except Bush (the idiot). Now thatās conservative.
We are in such deep chit.
What comes out of her mouth as shifting-left, is never what happens later on. For example, her disastrous meddling with the nationās health care, while she was the very unqualified First Lady, is responsible for what a shambles health care is today in the USA.
This was a major coup of the finance industry through the crash, orchestrated in 2008 and 2009, if not before, though presumably how much of the malice was aforethought varied between individuals. The three-part bailout delivered only to select moguls assured this, and the near-equal ābailoutsā delivered by both Republican and Democratic parties suggests deals cut in both camps before the election.
Age gallops towards us, and financial instruments that are called security can be withheld or rewarded or rendered significant or meaningless. Engagement within this false economy entails a dependence on the political convenience of its leaders, who can and have substantially changed the rules to their immediate convenience.
As displaced as this will sound to many, with a PhD and 45 years in the work force, my best hedge for a rich instead of poor poverty is having planted trees. I do not think that it means at all that we may turn our backs on these political battles, but I think that we should quit feeding these economic beasts more than we have toāand hunker down.
Is English your second language?
To Clinton words are just vibrations in the air she can convert to votes. If a different pattern of vibrations looks likely to produce more votes, she uses it until she finds another pattern that works better.
The vibrations have no meaning outside their ability to produce votes.
My, arenāt we snarky today.
Point being, with unappreciated overtones of gentle sarcasm, Hils is amazingly consistent, she is what sheās always been.
Jazzbo, I felt you misread my statement to read that Clinton hadnāt previously been a neoliberal.
People often misread my intent and Iām not immune from doing the same.
But snarky today?
Nay.
Every day! 
The only retirement program that should be implemented is SSN it needs to be funded and become the pension of all pensions paid for by employees and matched by employersā¦No more company retirement pensions these are not guaranteed to be there if the company goes broke and sells off its assets to lenders and most pensions are play things for corporate greed fleecing with constant feesā¦And companyās like to change the rules of retirementā¦Republicans should stop hating SSN and start funding itā¦Dont underfund it and then claim it is going brokeā¦Make the government keep a percentage in an account non touchable by congressional lawmakersā¦and do not turn it over to wall street to be fleeced by never ending feesā¦Increase payroll taxes a little and lift caps and bing bota bing you got a retirement worth its weightā¦Of course republicans and corporations hate it because they have to match the funds this is why the GOP hates ssn corporations are paying them to hate itā¦That is why they like to say it is going broke or a ponzi schemeā¦The republicans are frauds and con men for the industry.
Yes I had a friend in the USA who told me about this and I thought it absolutely nuts.
She spoke of her Aunt , a widower with no children who had scrimped and saved all her life as the mantra demanded of her to put aside a few thousands of dollars for her retirment. She took ill and the State insisted she spend all of her savings and sell all of her property besides the minimal before they would provide her with any help.
This is just callous.
Bardamu,
Thanks to CD and you guys enlightening me in the early 2000ās, thatās exactly what I did. I got my wife to buy a tropical garden of Eden, with about 50 fruit trees, two fishponds and a natural spring. I eat a lot of my meals from the back yard. Itās something else. Automatic watering from the sky and no pesticides or GMOās. No irrigation needed except for this crazy year where we find ourselves in the hottest year since records started in the 1800ās. Iām extremely concerned since they are over pumping the center of the island to save the crops, which is sucking seawater into our coastal lands. I swear my well water is getting salty. So with 30 frigginā typhoons last year, we are down to half of the fruit trees still standing and now a War is brewing right on our beach. And they just elected a dictator/gangster as president whoās into extra-judicial killings and New Peopleās Army violence.
In the face of so many threats, itās hard to see a bright future for us. But it gives me great satisfaction not to eat any junk food or buy trinkets from the Empire! We buy local only more and more. What was your PhD in?
āMay you live in interesting timesā¦ā is what the founders said when we started boycotting the British East India Company.
TJ
Dictator-gangster, extra-judicial killingsāThomas, it sounds like Florida.
If thatās a shallow, non-volcanic island, though, pumping out that lens of fresh water thatās just floating under the earth there could make the place a wind-swept salt flat in a very few years. I suppose in practice they are apt to stop when it ceases to turn a profit, but itās a bad strategy with the rising seas. You might test the well water, when you have facilities for that available. The odds that it really is salting sound pretty high.
There must be a range of relatively salt-resistant plants for the humid tropics, though I have mostly been researching plants for this desert I am in.
The feds are digging homesteaders out of their lands just west of here, north of Los Angeles. I wish I knew somewhere that felt safe.
You must have things grown out and doing pretty well by now, though, especially in that climate, where so much can happen so fast. Have you come across permaculture and the work of Bill Mollison and now quite a few others? I have found it extremely helpful.
The PhD is in American lit; I saw writing and ideas as the narrow edge of the wedge, so to speak. I returned to political considerations teaching because it was easier to get undergrads to write about. And I listened to Democracy Now en route to work and clipped articles for classes as the NYT kept fibbing about WMD in Iraq.
