Lol. I remember Chomsky saying GE is not about manufacturing much as it ought to be, but rather about moving money in very complicated ways.Who foresees its collapse in the next 5 years?
GE freezes pension benefits for 20k employees
181–190 of 260 posts
Re: GE freezes pension benefits for 20k employees
#182Earlier quoted context omitted.
>There's more politics involved - like the automotive unions giving up numerous raises for better pensions, companies refusing to fully fund pensions in good years leading to them being woefully underfunded in bad, etc. This is the inherent agency risk in defined benefits. The people at the beginning can make off like bandits while screwing those down the line, whether intentionally or not (due to global economic env…
>401k are extremely easy to administer, or at least much, much easier than defined benefit pensions. Definitely so! They require filing the Form 5500 annually with severe penalties for not doing so, and if safe harbor criteria aren't met, I believe an actuary may be required. I helped setup a small business 401k a few years ago and found Human Interest to be about the cheapest option overall at {employer: $120/month…
I mean the only compensation between an employer and employee should be cash (withheld at whatever taxes according to income tax rates).
If the government wants to then incentivize retirement or healthcare savings via tax deductions, it should offer that to everyone, regardless of employer or where the income came from. However, I'm also against using tax deductions as it allows for price obfuscation.
I would be okay with government providing incentives such as matching contributions. That would allow for clear accounting of government expenditures.
Re: GE freezes pension benefits for 20k employees
#183Earlier quoted context omitted.
I have yet to meet a single person who hasn't enthusiastically agreed that we should separate healthcare from employment. The reluctance comes when nobody has any idea what we're going to replace it with. We're at an unusual social state in this country where nobody trusts the government and nobody trusts big business. What does that leave? I'm a US freelancer, so I don't get health insurance through my employer. I g…
> I have yet to meet a single person who hasn't enthusiastically agreed that we should separate healthcare from employment. The reluctance comes when nobody has any idea what we're going to replace it with. Sadly, I have, and it is invariably from people who basically say those who don't work don't deserve healthcare. It is disturbing to hear people say this. They don't want to "pay" for someone else's healthcare. Th…
"They don't want to "pay" for someone else's healthcare. They don't get that they already are."
Curiosity, because you seem to have first hand experience and I do not- what happens when you present that they already are paying for peoples' healthcare?
Re: GE freezes pension benefits for 20k employees
#184Earlier quoted context omitted.
>It makes all the sense in the world when you compare it to any other business. You wouldn't expect for someone who paid $1M to get the same level of treatment as someone who paid $100. Currently, society does not find it acceptable for someone to die from a heart attack if they cannot pay for healthcare. And people already get different levels of care.
I don't see how you can justify without using a double standard the idea that its okay to use coercion to take advantage of a minority to enforce an idea of "acceptable" that they might not agree with.
It's not a double standard, I'm claiming that the way society works right now, people don't have complete freedom. Hospitals don't have the freedom to turn people away, even people don't have the freedom to refuse healthcare, so obviously something has to give from the side receiving the product/service (healthcare). It's similar to having to pay taxes for the myriad reasons. You can't opt out of roads and water and other infrastructure.
If voters came out and changed the requirement for hospitals to provide healthcare, or let people forego healthcare, then we can perhaps treat healthcare like any other business.
Re: GE freezes pension benefits for 20k employees
#185Earlier quoted context omitted.
I have yet to meet a single person who hasn't enthusiastically agreed that we should separate healthcare from employment. The reluctance comes when nobody has any idea what we're going to replace it with. We're at an unusual social state in this country where nobody trusts the government and nobody trusts big business. What does that leave? I'm a US freelancer, so I don't get health insurance through my employer. I g…
> I have yet to meet a single person who hasn't enthusiastically agreed that we should separate healthcare from employment. The reluctance comes when nobody has any idea what we're going to replace it with. Sadly, I have, and it is invariably from people who basically say those who don't work don't deserve healthcare. It is disturbing to hear people say this. They don't want to "pay" for someone else's healthcare. Th…
Would the free healthcare include only US citizens, all people who live in US, or everyone who comes to US on holiday?
If you want more affordable healthcare, you should make it cheaper, not force other people to pay overpriced bills for random strangers.
Re: GE freezes pension benefits for 20k employees
#186Keep in mind this comes on the heels of the Madoff whistleblower saying GE is a fraud: https://www.barrons.com/articles/ge-insurance-fraud-madoff-w... They piled up massive losses in their insurance division (long term care) and guess who gets slammed because of it? The workers.
It's not just the workers, GE shareholders have gotten slammed as well. GE's stock is down about 70% in the last 3 years.
This is what happens when a business underperforms.
Re: GE freezes pension benefits for 20k employees
#187Earlier quoted context omitted.
I have yet to meet a single person who hasn't enthusiastically agreed that we should separate healthcare from employment. The reluctance comes when nobody has any idea what we're going to replace it with. We're at an unusual social state in this country where nobody trusts the government and nobody trusts big business. What does that leave? I'm a US freelancer, so I don't get health insurance through my employer. I g…
> The reluctance comes when nobody has any idea what we're going to replace it with. The straightforward answer is to replace it with self-paid insurance plans. Even without redesigning our awful system of medical payments in the US, we could easily get rid of the “employer pays” part.
Self-paid insurance plans only work if you require every one to buy a plan. Otherwise many healthy people choose to go uncovered and the insurance pools get a higher portion of sick folks. Obamacare tried to get around this by using the individual mandate penalty. However, that was taken apart by the republican congress, so I think it's safe to say that self-pay insurance was/is not straight forward.
The most straightforward way is to have a universal coverage provided by the government (funded by tax revenue). Then we get rid of the whole problem of some people skipping out on coverage and free riding on the system.
Re: GE freezes pension benefits for 20k employees
#188Earlier quoted context omitted.
Stock is up 3% on this news, and no doubt will be up on future news of cuts to headcount, benefits, etc. So there's a conflict of interest here.
Conflict of interest? Isn’t the interest of a business survival and profit?
Those are examples of business interests, but if any business that doesn't care about the physical and financial wellbeing of its workers is a business we are better off without.
"We made a profit" is never an excuse for unethical/immoral business dealings.
Re: GE freezes pension benefits for 20k employees
#189... and this is why pension schemes should be managed by the government or at least tightly regulated. Just imagine GE going bankrupt - who's gonna pay the pension, then? The government in a bailout or what?
Do people not understand this is how pensions work. If your company isn't there when you retire, you don't get a pension. I find it incredibly risky to rely on pensions. I don't quite understand why employees are so excited about non cash benefits.
Employees are excited about non-cash benefits because they were told by their employers that they are worth getting excited about.
Employers are excited about non-cash benefits because it cuts risk by reducing their overall obligation to their employees.
Re: GE freezes pension benefits for 20k employees
#190I really think that the sooner we can separate out pensions and healthcare from employers, the better. Businesses main area of expertise is not in pensions and healthcare, and they cannot provide these services as efficiently as if there were many different insurance companies on the market offering these services for sale, and instead the company paid you a fee for your services, and then you went out on the market…
I would love for this to happen. But I see a couple blockers. 1) It is some sort of badge of honor to get a "job with benefits". 2) What if more people decide to not get healthcare? If your job gives it to you and you "only" have to pay a few hundred a month for your family, you are more likely to get it than if you payed everything out of pocket each month (even if your compensation increased). People would see all…
Europe has mostly already figured out all of these things. Jobs can still provide some benefits like accident insurance and transit cards, but healthcare and pensions are heavily regulated by the state apart from who you are working for.
Your points are American only and stem from a bunch of perverse decisions made during the wage controls of WW2.