At 10:29 PM 5/12/2005 -0500, Dan M. wrote: >> And what happens if the company goes bankrupt? >> >The pension fund wasn't owned by the company...it was not considered a >company asset. The problem was not that the pension obligations went to >other creditors (the employees were creditors after all). It was that the >company was able to use vodoo ecconomics to fund the pensions.
Wow, how surprising. It really all always comes back to bashing Republicans with you, doesn't it? First, we are talking about companies in bankruptcy. I find it very difficult to believe that everything would be hunky-dory if the company had just made even *more* payments in the past. Second, many of these funds are invested heavily in the company's own stock - perhaps not in the case of United - but it does exist, and this practice should be discontinued. Third, if the pension plan is based upon providing defined benefits, then these benefits are based upon the continued survival of the company. Again, if the company goes under, that is a huge risk for the employee. >>> If the money were spent to fund SS instead of paying for part of Bush's >>> tax cuts, >> >> "Paying for tax cuts" is a non-sequitur. > >It's all income transfer. No, it is not a transfer. It is the forgoing of income. > What happened in reality is that taxes went from > slightly progressive to virtually flat above, roughly, a 40k family income. This is another matter entirely from your original proposition that tax cuts must be "paid". And why are you definiing progressivity here only in terms of payments and not in terms of payments and benefits, if that is the definition that you want to use? >> Social Security is also fully funded this year, so that is a non-sequitur >> as well. > >So, you are saying that Reagan lied to me, but it's no big deal? Surprise, surprise, it all comes back to bashing Republicans for you. What does Reagan have to do with anything here? Did Reagan make some sort of unique statement about Social Security that Democrats did not? Did the *data* cause you to just pull Reagan's name out of the dark here? And when did I say that anything is "no big deal"? Your comment is so snippy its hard to pick out exactly what the substance is here, but I am not aware of having ever said that much of anything in regards to Social Security is "no big deal". >> > Look at the taxes _and_ the benefits and >> > see if, on average, SS is progressive or regressive. >> >> You're playing word games. > >No. I just like to look at data. I would be very surprised to learn that you used *data* to define the concepts of "progressive" and "regressive." Perhaps you have a source for this? >> A poor person making minimum wage is paying a 15.3% tax rate. >> >> A CEO making $22 million this year is paying a 0.06% tax rate. > >> That's regressive under anybody's definition of economics. > >How much does the CEO as a fraction of what he pays? How much does the >poor person get? I am presuming that the word "get" is missing after "CEO". At any rate, what the CEO or the poor person "gets" does not factor into the definitions of "progressive" and "regressive" with which I am familiar. Otherwise, one could pass tax cuts for the rich and call them "progressive"! And heck, using your logic we could raise taxes on welfare recipients and call it "progressive" too - after all, they're *getting* more than rich people, are they not? You can see how this logic is a recipe for absurdity. It also does not change the fact that the tax burden for making government pension payments to retirees falls vastly disproporitionately on the working poor. >> And oh yeah, that CEO earning $22 million is going to get a >> taxpayer-funded >> check when he retires. > >And, if he didn't, the poor person would have gotten nothing. Look at how >we look to cut Medicaid but expand Medicare. Programs that only favor the >poor are on the bottom of the priority list. Mularkey. The CEO is making $22 million in a single year, and he is going to support Social Security because the government is going to write him a check for a couple thousand dollars a month when he retires???? You are surely kidding me..... And if he didn't get this check, we would have *no* government program to support poor retirees??? So, by your logic, I can presume that you favored the Bush tax cuts, as cutting taxes for the rich surely builds support among the rich for helping the poor - without which we'd be leaving our grandparents to eat dog food.... JDG _______________________________________________ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
