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#pensions
mysharona1987 · 1 year
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The French really don’t fuck around.
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animentality · 1 month
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Biden wants to ban ripoff “financial advisors”
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I'll be at the Studio City branch of the LA Public Library on Monday, November 13 at 1830hPT to launch my new novel, The Lost Cause. There'll be a reading, a talk, a surprise guest (!!) and a signing, with books on sale. Tell your friends! Come on down!
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Once, American workers had "defined benefits pensions," where their employers promised to pay them a certain amount every year from their retirement to their death. Jimmy Carter swapped that out for 401(k)s, "market" pensions where you have to guess which stocks will be valuable or starve in your old age:
https://pluralistic.net/2020/07/25/derechos-humanos/#are-there-no-poorhouses
The initial 401(k) rollout had all kinds of pot-sweeteners that made them seem like a good deal, like heavy employer matching that doubled or even tripled the value of every dollar you put into the market for your retirement. But over the years, as Reaganomics took hold and workers' power ebbed away, all these goodies were clawed back. In the end, the market-based pension makes you the sucker at the poker table, flushing your savings into a rigged casino that is firmly tilted in favor of finance barons and other eminently guillotineable plutocrats.
Neoliberalism is many things, but most of all it is a cult of individualism. The fact that three generations of workers are nows facing down retirement without pensions that will provide them with secure housing and food – let alone money to see the odd movie, buy birthday gifts for their grandkids, or enjoy a meal out now and then – is framed as millions of individual failures, not a systemic one.
In other words, if you are facing food insecurity and homelessness after a lifetime of hard work, it's because you saved wrong. Perhaps you didn't save enough (through a 40-year run of wage stagnation and skyrocketing housing, health and education costs). Or perhaps you saved wrong, making the wrong bets on the stock market. If you can't afford to run your air conditioner during a heat dome, that's on you: you should have been better at stocks.
Apologists for this system will say that you don't have to be good at stocks – you just have to pay an Independent Financial Advisor to pick the stocks for you and you'll be fine. But IFAs don't work for free! What if you can't afford one?
Enter "predatory inclusion" – the practice of offering scammy, overpriced and substandard products to poor people and declaring it to be a good deed, because otherwise, those poor people would have to do without. The crypto bubble relied heavily on this: think of Spike Lee and others shilling for pump-and-dump scams as a way of "building Black wealth":
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/07/07/business/media/cryptocurrency-seeks-the-spotlight-with-spike-lees-help.html
More recently, Intuit and other scammy tax-prep services have argued against the IRS's plan to offer free tax preparation as bad for Black and brown people, because it will deny them the chance to be deceived and ripped off with TurboTax:
https://pluralistic.net/2023/09/27/predatory-inclusion/#equal-opportunity-scammers
Back in 2018, Trump won the predatory inclusion Olympics, when his Department of Labor let the Fifth Circuit abolish the "Fiduciary Rule" for Independent Financial Advisors:
https://www.investopedia.com/updates/dol-fiduciary-rule/
What was the Fiduciary Rule? It said that your IFN had to put your interests ahead of their own. Like, if there were two different funds you could bet on, and one would pay your IFN a big commission, while the other would be a better bet for you, the IFN couldn't put your retirement savings into the fund that offered them a bribe.
When Trump killed the Fiduciary Rule, he proclaimed it a victory for poor people, especially Black and brown people. After all, if IFNs weren't allowed to accept bribes for giving you bad financial advice, then they would have to make up the difference by charging you for good advice. If you couldn't afford that advice, well, you'd have to make bad retirement investments on your own, without the benefit of their sleazy self-dealing.
The Biden Administration wants to change that. Biden's Acting Labor Secretary is Julie Su, and she's very good at her job. Last spring, she forced west coast dockworkers' bosses to cough up the contract they'd stalled on for a year, with 8-10% raises for every worker, owed retroactively:
https://pluralistic.net/2023/06/16/that-boy-aint-right/#dinos-rinos-and-dunnos
Su has proposed a way to reinstate the Fiduciary Rule, as part of the Biden Administration's war on junk fees, estimating that this will increase retirees' net savings by 20%:
https://prospect.org/labor/2023-11-07-julie-su-labor-retirement-savers/
The new rule will force advisors who cheat their clients to pay restitution, and will require them to deliver all their advice in writing so that this cheating can be detected and punished.
The industry is furious, of course. They claim that "The Market (TM)" will solve this: if you get bad retirement savings advice and end up homeless and starving, then you will choose a different advisor in your next life, after you are reincarnated (I guess?).
And of course, they're also claiming that forcing IFNs to stop cheating their clients will deny poor people access to expert (bad) advice. As the Financial Services Institute's Dale Brown says, this will have a "negative impact on Main Street Americans’ access to financial advice":
https://www.fa-mag.com/news/legal-challenge-predicted-for-new-dol-fiduciary-proposal-75257.html
Here's that rule – read it for yourself, then submit a comment expressing your views on it. The government wants to hear from you, and administrative law requires them to act on the comments they receive:
https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2023/11/03/2023-23782/proposed-amendment-to-prohibited-transaction-exemptions-75-1-77-4-80-83-83-1-and-86-128
Su is part of a wave of progressive, technically skilled regulators in the Biden administration that resulted from a horse-trading exercise called the Unity Task Force, which divvied up access to top appointments among the progressive wing and the finance wing of the Democratic Party. The progressive appointments are nothing short of incredible – the most competent and principled agency leaders America has seen in half a century:
https://pluralistic.net/2023/10/23/getting-stuff-done/#praxis
But then there's the finance wing's appointments, like Judge Jacqueline Scott Corley, who ruled against Lina Khan's attempt to block the rotten Microsoft/Activision merger (don't worry, Khan's appealing):
https://pluralistic.net/2023/07/14/making-good-trouble/#the-peoples-champion
Perhaps the worst, though, is Biden's Secretary of Commerce Gina Raimondo, a private equity ghoul who did a stint for the notorious wreckers Bain Capital before founding her own firm. Raimondo has stuffed her department full of Goldman Sachs alums, and has sidelined labor and civil society groups as she sets out to administer everything from the CHIPS Act to regulating ChatGPT.
As Henry Burke writes for the Revolving Door Project and The American Prospect, Raimondo's history as a corporate raider, her deference to the finance sector, and she and her husband's conflicts of interest from their massive stakes in companies she's regulating all serve to undermine Biden's agenda:
https://prospect.org/economy/2023-11-08-commerce-secretary-gina-raimondo-undercutting-bidenomics/
When the administration inevitably complains that its popular economic programs aren’t breaking through the media coverage, they’ll have no one to blame but themselves.
The Unity Task Force gave us generationally important policymakers, but ultimately, it's a classic "pizzaburger." If half your family wants pizza, and the other half wants burgers, and you serve them something halfway in between that makes none of them happy, you haven't made a wise compromise – you've just made an inedible mess:
https://pluralistic.net/2023/06/17/pizzaburgers/
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If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:
https://pluralistic.net/2023/11/08/fiduciaries/#but-muh-freedumbs
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kropotkindersurprise · 11 months
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April 13, 2023 - Hundreds of union railway workers stormed the Paris headquarters of LVMH, the enormously rich French multinational known for producing luxury brands like Christian Dior, Louis Vuitton and Moët & Chandon.
The railway workers chanted "money, there is money in the coffers of the employers!". The owner of LVMH is the richest man in the world: Bernard Arnault, with a personal wealth of over 200 billion euros. Less than a tenth of this sum could easily finance the pensions of the entire French population. [video]
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thoughtportal · 1 year
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BlackRock offices in Paris
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18thcenturythirsttrap · 2 months
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Fuck this country.
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queerism1969 · 1 year
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οὐ γὰρ ἔστιν ἔπαλξις πλούτου πρὸς κόρον ἀνδρὶ λακτίσαντι μέγαν Δίκας βωμὸν εἰς ἀφάνειαν*
- Aeschylus
Riches are no defence for a man who has insolently trampled underfoot the altar of Justice until it disappears.*
Larry Fink, chairman and CEO of BlackRock. The main instigator behind the ESG fad with his much derided annual ‘CEO’s Letter.’
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gwydionmisha · 1 year
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eaglesnick · 6 days
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“A generous basic state pension is the least a civilized society should offer those who have worked hard and saved through their whole lives."  George Osborne
It was Tory Chancellor of the Exchequer Kenneth Clarke in 1993 who first announced plans to raise the pension age of women from 60 to 65 years of age.  The Tories 1995 Pension Act enshrined this in law but the changes were to be phased in between 2010 and 2020. So far so good – lots of warning, giving women plenty of time to financially prepared for the fact the OAP would not be available until they were 65.
Enter David Cameron, George Osborne, Nick Clegg and the Coalition Government of Austerity. In 2011 they decided to accelerate the changes and bring forward the state pension age for women to 65  by November 2018 and then to 66 by 2020.
Displaying typical Tory disregard for the detrimental financial effects this might have on ordinary working women, and displaying a total lack of common decency, some women claimed “they only received 12 months notice of the six-year delay to their pensions." (Guardian: 21/03/24), giving them no time to prepare for their unexpected loss of pension.
What is more The Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman found the Department of Work and Pensions “guilty of misadministration in its handling of the changes.”
Meanwhile Jeremy Hunt, in his latest budget has given millions away to the wealthy in pension tax breaks.
“Financial firms have said the changes to pension allowances could let high earners who can afford it build up pension pots worth as much as £9m while enjoying the full tax benefits.”  (Guardian: 16/03/24)
We deserve better.
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Fuck the Tories.
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On March 7, French workers took to the streets across the country denouncing the government’s controversial new pension reforms. Trade unions also participated in a general strike on Tuesday as part of their campaign for a ‘total shutdown’ of the country, while the French Senate is deliberating on the pension reforms bill. The protestors organized massive demonstrations in 200 cities and towns across the country.
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rumade · 2 months
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Younger people, their research has found, do not have the financial assets that their parents and grandparents did. In 2010, those under 40 held £7.53 of every £100 of wealth. By 2020, that had fallen to £3.98. One-third of the UK’s 14 million Gen-Xers are at high risk of retiring on insufficient income.
From this guardian article about the possibility of raising the pension age to 71.
96% of wealth in the UK is held by people over 40. Anyone not receiving an inheritance is screwed.
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Union pensions are funding private equity attacks on workers
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On October 7–8, I'm in Milan to keynote Wired Nextfest.
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If end-stage capitalism has a motto, it's this: "Stop hitting yourself." The great failure of "voting with your wallet" is that you're casting ballots in a one party system (The Capitalism Party), and the people with the thickest wallets get the most votes.
During the Cultural Revolution, the Chinese state would bill the families of executed dissidents for the ammunition used to execute their loved ones:
https://www.quora.com/Is-it-true-the-Chinese-government-makes-the-families-of-executed-people-pay-for-the-cost-of-bullets
In end-stage capitalism, the dollars we spend to feed ourselves are used to capture the food supply and corrupt our political process:
https://pluralistic.net/2023/10/04/dont-let-your-meat-loaf/#meaty-beaty-big-and-bouncy
And the dollars we save for retirement are flushed into the stock market casino, a game that is rigged against us, where we are always the suckers at the table:
https://pluralistic.net/2020/07/25/derechos-humanos/#are-there-no-poorhouses
Everywhere and always, we are financing our own destruction. It's quite a Mr Gotcha moment:
https://thenib.com/mister-gotcha/
Now, anything that can't go on forever will eventually stop. We are living through a broad, multi-front counter-revolution to Reaganomics and neoliberal Democratic Party sellouts. The FTC and DOJ Antitrust Division are dragging Big Tech and Big Meat and Big Publishing into court. We're seeing bans on noncompete clauses, and high-profile government enforcers are publicly pledging never to work for corporate law-firms when they quit public service:
https://pluralistic.net/2023/09/09/nein-nein/#everything-is-miscellaneous
And of course, there's the reinvigoration of the labor movement! Hot Labor Summer is now Perpetual Labor September, with 75,000 Kaiser workers walking out alongside the UAW, SAG-AFTRA and 2,350 other groups of workers picketing, striking or protesting:
https://striketracker.ilr.cornell.edu/
But capitalism still gets a lick in. Union pension plans are some of the most important investors in private equity funds. Your union pension dollars are probably funding the union-busting, child-labor-employing, civilization-destroying Gordon Gecko LARPers who are also evicting you from the rental they bought and turned into a slum, and will then murder you in a hospice that they bought and turned into a slaughterhouse:
https://pluralistic.net/2023/04/26/death-panels/#what-the-heck-is-going-on-with-CMS
Writing for The American Prospect, Rachel Phua rounds up the past, present and future of union pension funds backing private equity monsters:
https://prospect.org/labor/2023-10-04-workers-funding-misery-private-equity-pension-funds/
Private equity and hedge funds have destroyed 1.3 million US jobs:
https://united4respect.org/press-release/people-who-work-at-walmart-sears-amazon-formerly-toys-r-us-more-join-forces-together-as-united-for-respect-2-2-2-2-5-3/
They buy companies and then illegally staff them with children:
https://www.dol.gov/newsroom/releases/whd/whd20230217-1
They lobby against the minimum wage:
https://pestakeholder.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/Insire-Brands-memo-on-15-wage.pdf
They illegally retaliate against workers seeking to unionize their jobsite:
https://www.hoteldive.com/news/dc-hotel-workers-enlist-us-representatives-to-fight-sofitel-union-busting/650396/
And they couldn't do it without union pension funds. Public service union pensions have invested $650 million with PE funds. In 2001, the share of public union pensions invested in PE was 3.5%; today, it's 13%:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1B0vv26VEFmwtfw5ur6dSDMY8NftvZKij/
Giant public union funds like CalPERS are planning massive increases in their contributions to PE:
https://www.calpers.ca.gov/page/newsroom/calpers-news/2023/calpers-preliminary-investment-return-fiscal-year-2022-23
This results in some ghastly and ironic situations. Aramark used funds from a custodian's union to bid against that union's members for contracts, in an attempt to break the union and force the workers to take a paycut to $11/hour:
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2012-11-20/pension-fund-gains-mean-worker-pain-as-aramark-cuts-pay
Blackstone's investors include the California State Teachers Retirement System (CalSTRS). The PE ghouls who sucked Toys R Us dry were funded by Texas teachers.
Then there's KKR, one of the most rapacious predators of the PE world. Half of the investors in KKR's Global Infrastructure Investors IV fund are public sector pension funds. Those workers' money were spent to buy up Refresco (Arizona Iced Tea, Tropicana juices, etc), a transaction that immediately precipitated a huge spike in on-the-job accidents as KKR cut safety and increased tempo:
https://www.osha.gov/ords/imis/establishment.inspection_detail?id=1675674.015
Petsmart is the poster-child for PE predation. The company uses TRAPs ("TrainingRepaymentAgreementProvision") clauses to recreate indentured servitude, forcing workers to pay thousands of dollars to quit their jobs:
https://pluralistic.net/2022/08/04/its-a-trap/#a-little-on-the-nose
Why would a Petsmart employee want to quit? Petsmart's PE owner is BC Partners, and under BC's management, workers have been forced to work impossible hours while overseeing cruel animal abuse, including starving sick animals to death rather than euthanizing them, and then being made to sneak them into dumpsters on the way home from work so Petsmart doesn't have to pay for cremation. 24 of BC Partners' backers are public pension funds, including CalSTRS and the NYC Employees' Retirement System:
https://prospect.org/culture/books/2023-06-02-days-of-plunder-morgenson-rosner-ballou-review/
PE buyouts are immediately followed by layoffs. One in five PE acquisitions goes bankrupt. Unions should not be investing in PE. But the managers of these funds defend the practice, saying they "facilitate dialog" with the PE bosses on workers' behalf.
This isn't total nonsense. Once upon a time, public pension fund managers put pressure on investees to force them to divest from Apartheid South Africa and tobacco companies. Even today, public pensions have successfully applied leverage to get fund managers to drop Russian investments after the invasion of Ukraine. And public pensions pulled out of the private prison sector, tanking the valuation of some of the largest players.
But there's no evidence that this leverage is being applied to pensions' PE billions. It's not like PE is a great deal for these pensions. PE funds don't reliably outperform the market, especially after PE bosses' sky-high fees are clawed back:
https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3623820
Pension funds could match or beat their PE returns by sticking the money in a low-load Vanguard index tracker. What's more, PE is getting worse, pioneering new scams like inflating the value of companies after they buy and strip-mine them, even though there's no reason to think anyone would buy these hollow companies at the price that the PE companies assign to them for bookkeeping purposes:
https://www.institutionalinvestor.com/article/2bstqfcskz9o72ospzlds/opinion/why-does-private-equity-get-to-play-make-believe-with-prices
To inject a little verisimilitude into this obvious fantasy, PE companies sell their portfolio companies to themselves at inflated prices, in a patently fraudulent shell-game:
https://www.ft.com/content/646d00f4-af5d-4267-a436-54fb3bc1697b
What's more, PE funds aren't just bad bosses, they're also bad landlords. PE-backed funds have scooped up an appreciable fraction of America's housing stock, transforming good rentals into slums:
https://pluralistic.net/2022/01/27/extraordinary-popular-delusions/#wall-street-slumlords
PE is really pioneering a literal cradle-to-grave immiseration strategy. First, they gouge you on your kids' birth:
https://pluralistic.net/2021/10/27/crossing-a-line/#zero-fucks-given
Then, they slash your wages and steal from your paycheck:
https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3465723
Then, they evict you from your home:
https://pluralistic.net/2023/06/05/vulture-capitalism/#distressed-assets
And then they murder you as part of a scam they're running on Medicare:
https://pluralistic.net/2023/08/05/any-metric-becomes-a-target/#hca
As the labor movement flexes its muscle, it needs to break this connection. Workers should not be paying for the bullet that their bosses put through their skulls.
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If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:
https://pluralistic.net/2023/10/05/mr-gotcha/#no-ethical-consumption-under-capitalism
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My next novel is The Lost Cause, a hopeful novel of the climate emergency. Amazon won't sell the audiobook, so I made my own and I'm pre-selling it on Kickstarter!
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March 7, 2023 - A cop gets knocked out in Paris during protests against the raising of the pension age. [video]/[video]
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nando161mando · 2 months
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Canadian pension funds invested $1.6 billion in companies tied to Israeli apartheid
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