Biden the Bailout King is at it again

That's $100,000 per worker, right? How do we rationalize that when so many peoples' retirement funds took such a big hit this year?

 

When I saw this yesterday I did some research on it.
A teamster with 30 years of service has a pension of 5k per month. So if couple who worked 30 years and both received social security would be making around 170k a year in retirement. Or in the top 10 percent or so of family incomes.
Meantime, 81 percent of retirees have some form of a pension, and only around 25 percent of current workers will have one. And a worker who scrimps and saves a million dollars over their life would only get around 40k a year out of that money. And only about 3 percent of workers have even saved that much.
And they are the ones paying for this bailout, despite the fact that they need far more help than the unions do.
But such is the nature of politics, and this admin in particular.

 

You sure about that? I just glanced a couple of articles and saw 21 percent ...

 

Majority of Today’s Retirees Have a Pension | PLANADVISER.

 

Because they are union employees and we aren't?

 

Union members are special. They deserve more than everyone else. Ive been working 30 years and get nothing other than what Ive saved

 

United we bargain, divided we beg. Every worker needs a union.

 

European union model I can support. US unions are terrible unless you are a slacker

 

Have not read up on this specific issue yet but unions in general are a positive for our economy and for workers. They are a large part of what separates the economies of Western democracies with those of more totalitarian countries.

In terms of their historic links to organize crime, technically true. But American corporate management commits similar criminal acts that are only legal by definition due to their lobbying power. To oversimplify, and to paraphrase an old buddy, when corporate heads compare notes on common strategy, it's called networking. When union leaders do it, it's called racketeering.

Pensions are an especially thorny issue. We've tried significant legislation to protect pensions due to the predatory nature of corporate heads. That protection has been eroding. Great book on it about 10 years ago.

I suspect there's more to this issue. I'll wait for a substack analysis from a confident analyst

 

Some Kevin Drum met a historical analysis on the impact of unions

The Virtue of Unions

 

Pensions were common for generations and only left the majority of companies in the last 20 years. My company got rid of their# about 7 years ago for instance, but both my parents get one still. Most who are already retired are old enough that they still had them. Those still working don’t. Hence the difference.

 

You have accurately described the effects of a 50-year campaign to delegitimize and destroy unions. That's not the same as the actual effect of unions. I would recommend to Michael Lewis read on the benefit of governmental workers as compared to their reputation.

 

Unions lost their standing and bargaining power because of international competition. You can’t demand 70k a year and a lifelong thousands a month pension when someone in Vietnam will do the same job for 10 dollars a day and no benefits. And unions were almost incomprehensibly slow in realizing it, and priced themselves out of many industries. Things like this pension debacle are the final death throes of a dying way of life.

 

Never seen a bailout I like. This is no different. Sorry if your pension/business/farm/bank/utility was mismanaged, it isn't my responsibility.