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Companies controlled by PE firms use bankruptcy to shed pension obligations

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Re: Companies controlled by PE firms use bankruptcy to shed pension obligations

#151

Post by bsbechtel »

kenmicklas wrote: post #149
bsbechtel wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a truly horrendous position you've taken. You're arguing that it is somehow rational to not want a child to benefit from his or her caretakers. The only logical conclusion from this is why stop at death? Why don't we make it so it's illegal for a parent to take any action that provides any sort of benefit for their children, and all children are dependent upon the state from birth, with all adults paying a man…

Actually, we live in quite a dystopian reality. Your only argument is a slippery slope fallacy. I never said that a child should not benefit from their caretakers. Only that they should not inherit economic wealth which they did not produce.

So explain what's the tangible difference between receiving benefits while the parent is alive and after they're dead? Either way the child is inheriting economic wealth they didn't produce, which shines a light on the horrendousness of your argument.

Re: Companies controlled by PE firms use bankruptcy to shed pension obligations

#152

Post by aswanson »

kenmicklas wrote: post #150
aswanson wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most parents want that. An overwhelming majority, in fact. Not just me. Good enough?

Nope. I would argue that most parents want that because the economic system we live in compels them to.

It also compels me to pay my bills and be responsible with my money. Such is life.

Re: Companies controlled by PE firms use bankruptcy to shed pension obligations

#153

Post by _k3an »

bsbechtel wrote: post #151
kenmicklas wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually, we live in quite a dystopian reality. Your only argument is a slippery slope fallacy. I never said that a child should not benefit from their caretakers. Only that they should not inherit economic wealth which they did not produce.

So explain what's the tangible difference between receiving benefits while the parent is alive and after they're dead? Either way the child is inheriting economic wealth they didn't produce, which shines a light on the horrendousness of your argument.

Instead of calling my argument horrendous with no justification, maybe you could try engaging with it. I, too, would like to just call you a right-wing libertarian nutjob or something like that and move on with life, but hopefully something better can happen. :)

> Either way the child is inheriting economic wealth they didn't produce

There isn't a whole lot. But you're missing the point of parenting. Hint: it's not financial support. You can't write a baby a check for $1M, plop it down in an empty house and expect it to live a good life. After you die you're not doing any of the stuff that actually makes having a parent valuable to a child relative to receiving the necessary financial support (which will not even be available to working class children under your proposed system).

Maybe if you were confident your children would be adequately taken care of if you died, you wouldn't have to work so hard saving up a nest egg and would actually have more time to be a parent.

Re: Companies controlled by PE firms use bankruptcy to shed pension obligations

#154

Post by kenmicklas »

PurpleBoxDragon wrote: post #121
kenmicklas wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why not? Then the wealth can be distributed to everyone fairly. Having this safety net available for everyone and not just the rich would reduce the need for wealth hoarding in the first place. Your ideology has no justification besides your own particular interest in the class position of your offspring.

>Then the wealth can be distributed to everyone fairly. Who determines what is fair?

Divide evenly by number of people? It's really not that difficult.

Re: Companies controlled by PE firms use bankruptcy to shed pension obligations

#155

Post by ChrisLomont »

tw04 wrote: post #60
ChrisLomont wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>a pension is part of your income It's usually part of a future worker's income. That is how they are underfunded. If the employee paid into a fund then these problems would happen less. The problem is it's a promise to pay future money to today workers in the future, and when future money does not pan out, there is no reason one debt holder (pensioner) should have absolute precedence over another (lender, who someti…

>For example, putting a pensioner absolutely first would make lenders stay away, and any companies that have a chance of being saved by lenders would then die, causing more pain. And when is the last time one of these companies had their pensions cut, executives paid, then turned around the ship to be successful? I mean, that's a great story on paper, but it's never the way this plays out. BEST CASE a PE firm buys up…

>And when is the last time one of these companies had their pensions cut, executives paid, then turned around the ship to be successful?

GM just did that during the recession, saving a huge number of jobs, and enabling GM to pay partial pensions. In fact, probably any company (and municipality, of which there are many) that went through or was near bankruptcy and turned around did so because of access to capital.

So you claim it never happens. I claim it happens in almost every case where some company was saved. Loans don't magically appear to help places without access to capital markets, which means in almost all cases PE.

That you don't see it, even in high profile cases like this, doesn't make it uncommon. Simply google and you'll find lots of examples counter to your claims.

If you want some academic studies, [1] shows that PE companies are better managed across developed and developing countries than non-PE, [2] shows that PE financed companies service debt at a lower cost to companies than non-PE firms (meaning that not taking PE, but using other sources, costs the company more), [3] shows that PE companies show more growth and employment than non-PE companies, and on and on. These are peer-reviewed journal articles that measure precisely what you likely have developed a feeling about from news and pop sources.

These articles are representative of a google scholar search on private equity research since 2015, and all appear on the first page. The rest of the page that addresses your claims reads similarly. Check it yourself.

[1] https://www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=10.1257/aer.p20151000

[2] https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/journal-of-financial...

[3] https://pubsonline.informs.org/doi/abs/10.1287/mnsc.2015.240...

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