
A preview of the U.S. without pensions - lnguyen
https://www.mercurynews.com/2017/12/23/i-hope-i-can-quit-working-in-a-few-years-a-preview-of-the-us-without-pensions/
======
lewis500
This is horrible. A few years ago I realized my parents were way behind on
savings and just incessantly nagged them until they got on a good plan. They
kicked and screamed the whole time ("You're our son. You can't tell us what to
do."), but it's turned out to be one of the best decision I ever made. Next
year they are actually going to retire. I dunno what I'd do if they had to
work at Wal-Mart just to make ends meet.

Recently, I made this visualization of how US social security benefits are
calculated:

[https://lewis500.github.io/socialsecurity](https://lewis500.github.io/socialsecurity)

Before I made it I actually had no idea. I think I might have worked a little
harder to earn money when I was younger if I'd understood.

~~~
bagels
Would be nice if the birth year were adjustable.

~~~
lewis500
I thought about that but it makes the visualization much more complicated and,
moreover, would require forecasting wages way out into the future to be
relevant to a millennial. If you had tried to do some wage forecast in 1970
you would've gotten things very wrong, so maybe the same is true today. One
day I will add this feature but not soon.

------
jo909
> The average life expectancy in 1950 was 68, meaning that a pension had to
> pay out only three years past the typical retirement age of 65. Today,
> average life expectancy is about 79, meaning that the same plan would have
> to pay out 13 years past typical retirement age.

That's the wrong statistic to use and completely wrong conclusion.

Life expectancy _for a 65 year old_ person in 1950 was another 13.9 years.
That rose only to 19.1 years in 2010 (newest number I found at a glance).

All the babies and people dying before age 65 reduce the average life
expectancy drastically, but have no bearing on pension payment length.

~~~
skookum
All the people dying before 65 absolutely do have a bearing on pension payment
length: If an employer promises someone a pension at 35 and they don't live
long enough to collect then the employer doesn't have to fund that commitment.
Using life expectancy at 65 would only be valid if the pensions were being
promised only to those who had already lived to 65 and at the time they were
65.

~~~
jo909
This is totally an important factor for the pension provider, your are right
about that. They will factor in how many people will never reach the payout
age, the distribution of payout age, maybe if the spouse is covered too how
long they might live, how may people switch their jobs and forfeit the pension
etc.

I'd argue this has an impact on the "savings rate" per employee, but not on
the average payout length.

~~~
skookum
> I'd argue this has an impact on the "savings rate" per employee, but not on
> the average payout length.

Your argument is only correct if we define the average payout length to only
factor in those employees who receive at least one check. However the original
quote that you claimed was wrong is referring how much the pension has to pay
out on average, which is not limited to those who live long enough to collect
a payout. Their average payout length of 3 years factors in a whole bunch of
$0 payouts, whereas your average ignores all of the zeros.

~~~
jo909
I follow your argument, but I think that's certainly not what the author of
the article was intending.

And that's a very hard number to come by, because as I've argued you would
have to factor in all other reasons why a pension might have to be paid out
longer or not at all.

Certainly "3 years of average payout" must be completely and utterly wrong
because this number includes infants etc which were never employed. Infant and
child mortality has an enormous impact on average life expectancy.

------
dsr_
Then corporate America changed: Union membership waned. Executive boards,
under pressure from financial raiders, focused more intently on maximizing
stock prices. ...

Exactly what led corporate America away from pensions is a matter of debate
among scholars, but there is little question that they seem destined for
extinction, at least in the private sector.

Oh, please. Nobody seriously debates this, the answer is right there. The
policy of the federal government, since Reagan, has been to bust the power of
unions every chance they get. Just look at the decisions of the NLRB before
and after Reagan.

Labor lost power, corporations gained it. First pensions were reduced, then
deliberately underfunded, then raided, then eliminated. The government went
along with all of that.

~~~
zackmorris
I second this. We have access to vastly more powerful technology than in 1980
and the GDP of most developed countries is many times what it used to be. We
should all be earning at least twice what we did, and we should be working
fewer hours, with more benefits. The retirement age should be 60 or even 55
today, maybe younger, and social security should have kept up with inflation
to pay more.

All of this would have happened with unions and deciding in favor of labor
whenever possible. Instead we did the opposite, and here we are in an
unsustainable class war with the ugliest aspects of our past coming back to
haunt us.

I am all for ending labor as we know it and letting machines do most of the
work. But humans must still be in charge, not
capital/corporations/sociopaths/liars/lobbyists and so on.

~~~
toomuchtodo
I'm going to keep beating this drum: organize and vote.

------
1001101
World Economic Forum estimates retirement shortfalls in public pension/private
pension/individual savings in 2015 at 70 trillion$, and projects nearly half a
quadrillion (400 tril) shortfall in 2050, with the lion's share belonging to
the US. [1, page 7] Interest rates stuck at the 0 bound (and negative real)
for nearly a decade haven't helped. I foresee a bumpy ride figuring out who
gets stuck with the bill.

[1]
[http://www3.weforum.org/docs/WEF_White_Paper_We_Will_Live_to...](http://www3.weforum.org/docs/WEF_White_Paper_We_Will_Live_to_100.pdf)
[PDF]

~~~
ec109685
Why will the world be so much worse off at 400 trillion instead of 70
trillion?

Presumably “the world” will have many many more folks making more money by
then given the rates of economic growth in third world countries. 10B people
can cover 400T in 10 years paying just $10 a day.

~~~
mattmanser
Western world has stopped having as many children, hence why governmemts are
dead keen on immigration even though their constituents aren't.

------
sbennettmcleish
These "company managed" pension schemes have always fascinated me and would
seem ripe for corruption / raiding by the company if they're short a few $$$.

Seems like in Australia we're in a pretty good position with "superannuation"
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superannuation_in_Australia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superannuation_in_Australia)
being compulsory since 1992 and is typically managed by completely unrelated
parties to your employer.

The payments are generally made directly by your employer into the fund of
your own choosing.

The biggest thing is once you've had this contributed to YOUR account, it is
YOURS (drawable from age 65) and doesn't matter what happens to the fortunes
of your employer(s) in the future.

~~~
e40
That's why independently run 401(k)'s are the best. I'm a trustee of the one
for our company, and there's no way I could raid it.

~~~
njarboe
Lots of people "raid" it by going to cash in the down-turns in the market and
buying in the hyped peaks losing over 50% in the cycle.

~~~
e40
I think your usage of "raid" is not what is being discussed here. The meaning
here is when companies get in trouble, they use loopholes (or downright evil
language) in their retirement plans to essentially take the money from
employees.

------
maerF0x0
IMO a major issue is the expectance of someone else to take care of "me". I
know that I'm retired for ~30 out of 80 years of my life and thus have to save
~3/8ths of my income, else starve. (Yes, some modifiers for tax brackets,
compounding blah blah...)

In the past people's children were the "investment" that paid the dividends
into old age. Now we no longer have children to bear the burden. Yet we spend
the normally sacrificed dollars on lattes, world travel, iphones (and whatever
icon of excess you choose).

I realize many people say its "hard" to save these days. But I also think
there is some spectrum involved with doing what pays vs what one "wants" and
ensuring one's lifestyle matches their actual ranked income in a society. (ie,
if you earn on the 10th percentile, then you probably should be spending on
the 10th percentile on dinners out or whatever icon of excess you want to pick
on.)

~~~
gedy
I hear a lot about the nickel and dime stuff on how to save, but most people
get eaten up by interest on home and education loans and medical costs. The
other issue is interest rates being so low it amounts to a war on savings that
neither party seems to willing to do anything about.

~~~
JoshTriplett
> The other issue is interest rates being so low it amounts to a war on
> savings

I used to think this; then I discovered index funds, and stopped keeping money
in a savings account.

~~~
njarboe
How did you feel in the 2008 crash? No snark, just wondering how that was
versus a savings account.

~~~
maerF0x0
VTI is up ~200% since the bottom. If he bought (dollar cost averaging) and
held. Probably feels great.

~~~
njarboe
He would feel great now. Just wondering his attitude when his "savings"
dropped ~50% 2008-2009. Most people can't handle saving a million dollars over
25 years and have it drop in half over 6 months. The pain is too much.
Avoiding this situation (and other reasons) is why pensions are better for
most people.

------
ghufran_syed
Defined benefit plans are unaffordable, whether for a company or a government.
But while defined contribution actually generate great returns, they have the
problem that urgent expenses always crowd out saving, particularly for lower
income groups (same as it would if income taxes were collected annually, or
less frequently). Seems like the optimal solution is to combine the compulsory
contribution part of the current social security system with a defined
contribution system that can actually generate the income that will be needed.
As far as I can tell, the pension system in Chile in the 80’s and 90’s was
like this, and had the additional benefit of generating large amounts of
investment capital during its operation which helped economic growth.

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pensions_in_Chile](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pensions_in_Chile)

~~~
ec109685
Why are defined benefit plans _always_ unaffordable?

You don’t want people’s retirements to be affected by the value of their
investment at the moment of withdrawal. Instead you want the benefit to
incorporate the expected value at retirement of the investment over the long
run.

The problem with many pensions is that the businesses themselves supporting
them essentially went belly up as competition, technology and investors took
their toll.

~~~
zzleeper
For company plans, you said the answer. It's silly to assume that your
employer will be alive when you are 80 year sold, and also seems like a stupid
idea for a company in a completely unrelated business to get into the
retirement fund mgmt business.

For states, the reason is population. If your pop doubles every 50 years, then
you only need 2 young people to pay for one retiree. If it's the opposite
(Japan now, US in a few decades), then you are screwed.

~~~
briandear
So it’s a Ponzi scheme.

~~~
JetSpiegel
More like a loan from current workers to be repaid when those workers retire.

------
rwmj
I'm missing a detail of the US system ...

> _Years ago, Coomer and his co-workers at the Tulsa plant of McDonnell-
> Douglas, the famed airplane maker, were enrolled in the company pension, but
> in 1994, with an eye toward cutting retirement costs, the company closed the
> plant._

Did the McDonnell-Douglas company not pay into a separate pension fund, or did
they raid the fund somehow?

~~~
advisedwang
It sounds like by closing the plant and stopping the employees reaching
retirement age, they massively reduced the amount the employees were eligible
to receive. Even if the pension fund was separate, by reducing eligibility
this way they company had to pay less into it over the following years.

~~~
ac29
To add to that, this pension (and many others) was structured such that
payouts are non-linear based on number of years worked, so for example, you
might get:

0-5 years worked: no pension

5-10 years worked: 5% pension

10-20 years worked: 20% pension

30+ years worked: full pension

By preventing workers from being able to work the full 30+ years, they never
had to pay the full pension. One of the workers in the story mentions
receiving 1/5 of full pension after being laid off due to the closure.

~~~
VLM
The popular marketing reason why the pension disappeared is the factory
closed.

The real reason the pension disappeared is the proposed vesting duration was
ridiculous. I am older so current jobs have no pension of course, but when I
worked jobs with pensions, the vesting duration was typically something like 3
to 5 years for 100% vesting, sometimes only 2 years for 50% vesting. In fact I
have a pension from a previous employer projected to be worth $800/month which
by then will be about the price of one cup of starbucks coffee...

To make it crystal clear, the pension was eliminated when the vesting duration
was moved from perhaps 4 years to 30+ years.

~~~
rwmj
Thanks for replying. I found an article about "vesting duration" for US
pensions, and if I'm understanding correctly this means that after you leave
the job for <N> years, the pension you are entitled to drops to half and
(after more years) completely disappears. This seems incredible to me! Surely
this would mean that younger workers who work for a company even for a long
time but then leave would never collect a pension from that company?

~~~
VLM
The investopedia probably explains it better than I can

[https://www.investopedia.com/terms/v/vesting.asp](https://www.investopedia.com/terms/v/vesting.asp)

[https://www.investopedia.com/partner/investopedia/articles/r...](https://www.investopedia.com/partner/investopedia/articles/retirement/112916/pension-
vesting-everything-you-need-know.asp)

More like if you work somewhere for enough years, you'll the golden handcuffs
of extra bonus, or the flip side if you quit each job after two years you get
nothing.

------
shorttime
Terrible spot to be in, hoping I will avoid it with a traveling retirement
plan (401k). How do other 1st world countries manage elderly workers/people
that should no longer work? SS is an option and I don't believe it will go
bankrupt, wages of about 125K contribute to SS, anything larger does not. Just
have to adjust that limit to keep it where it needs to be. So that helps a
little bit.

~~~
ajmurmann
I think most European countries have more generous/realistic state provided,
financial retirement support.

~~~
user5994461
It varies vastly by country. In France, the state calculates a percent of your
income during the 4X years you were working and gives you that as a pension.
The estimation can be pretty complicated, but that's fair enough for a one
line explanation.

The system will collapse eventually. More and more elderly to support by less
and less active workers. The younger population is suffering from vast
unemployment (25%) and they will never achieve 40 years of continuous work in
their lifetime.

~~~
selestify
> More and more elderly to support

> The younger population is suffering from vast unemployment

It appears there is a lot of work to be done and a lot of idle workers to do
it. The fact that both can exist in tandem seems like an indictment of how
horribly inefficient our economic systems currently are.

~~~
user5994461
Not sure what you mean. Retirees don't create jobs. They just get money handed
to them monthly as promised by the pension formula decided decades ago. (that
money is supposed to come from taxes on active workers's salaries)

The whole system collapse when taxes are not enough to cover the pensions that
were promised. It's a ponzi scheme.

~~~
mwfunk
That’s a problem of demographics and unemployment, not a Ponzi scheme. Ponzi
schemes are scams, but they do effectively take money from people and give it
to other people, which doesn’t happen if there’s no funds to transfer.

I don’t think any country can sustain a 25% unemployment rate for any length
of time without it having catastrophic second- and third-order effects. That’s
the problem, not the concept of taxpayer-funded pensions. All sorts of things
are going to be underfunded or otherwise hosed if you’re struggling with 25%
unemployment for any length of time. Nations have imploded over far less.

~~~
user5994461
It's not the percentage for the whole population. It's 25% unemployment for
young people. 50% unemployment for young people without higher education.

------
scarface74
Why would I want to be at a company for 30 years with a ridiculous vesting
schedule in hopes of getting a pension?

On an unrelated note, the article mentioned in passing that some of these
people are in debt paying for their children's college. Why does anyone feel
like it's their responsibility to get in debt to put their children through
college? Let their children go to a more affordable college, or let them take
out debt on their own.

Every financial planner tells you to take care of your own retirement before
you worry about your children's college.

I've made a lot of mistakes and made some intentionally choices that in my mid
40s, I don't see a comfortable retirement in my future even at 65. I'm not
complaining about it, I like what I do, it's not physically demanding, and as
a developer, my job is my hobby. I can't see myself not at least working part
time in technology in some form.

------
flatfilefan
Isn't this the result of diminishing return on the military spending in the US
and the now absent pressure form Soviet Union to maintain the paritiy on
social benefits?

------
alkonaut
This is the most jarring thing to me when I land in the US. Already at the
airport you see security staff, cleaning staff that look like they should have
been enjoying retirement for several years.

------
clackanon
It's nice to know someone can express a dissenting opinion, and still be
reasoned with, and not downvoted into oblivion.

Oh. Wait. That's par for the course on HN.

God forbid you think anything different from the hive mind. If you do, you're
not welcome here.

~~~
plandis
Huh?

------
nhooyr
Whats with the scrolling on that website...?

------
aramadia
And the best part is that the next generation will have it even worse. They’ll
have 75% Social security payments, little chance of building net worth through
home purchases and a lifetime of $10/hr jobs.

~~~
hkmurakami
Perversely, it may not be the worst thing if an entire generation decides that
building wealth through your primary residence is not the best idea, and
forgoes this in their lives and pushes their representatives to repeal the
slew of incentives currently written into the tax code.

~~~
starlust2
Not if in lieu of homes they invest in nothing at all. If you don't own a home
you're paying rent. Rent prices have also increased dramatically so it's not
like there's money going into savings.

Personally, I pay more in student loans than every one of my parents, aunts,
and uncles pay on ybeir mortgage. I pay 2-3 times more in rent than their
mortgage. I might be ok but only because of a high paying tech job. Those at
the lower end the scale are absolutely fucked.

------
rukittenme
Here's a fun game for everyone. If you don't save, and your company doesn't
save, and your government doesn't save then how the hell do you figure you're
going to retire?

~~~
konschubert
You can have a "contract of the generations", where the younger generation
finances the pensions of the older generation through social security
payments.

Many countries do it like that.

~~~
user5994461
That's a ponzi scheme. That's what many countries in Europe do and that is
currently collapsing.

It takes something like 4 active workers to pay the pension of 1 current
retiree. The proportion was fine after the baby boom, it's not anymore and
it's getting worse.

~~~
Joeri
It's not a ponzi scheme, it's a numbers game. Basically the formula is: X * Y
= A * B, where X is the number of retirees, Y the number of years they live
past retirement on average, A the number of people who work, and B the number
of years an average career lasts.

What is happening in europe is that the right-hand side of the equation is
producing a lower number (due to later career starts and less actively working
population), which requires reducing the left-hand side accordingly (by
increasing retirement age or cutting pensions). The system cannot collapse
(there's always a right-hand side), but it can require severe adjustments.

~~~
user5994461
The base is a ponzi scheme. Promise to pay people over 65 a guaranteed sum per
month and hope that the taxes on working people can fund it.

You're right that it doesn't have to be a ponzi scheme. The government could
increase the age of retirement and/or lower the pensions. However that's not
possible in practice, it doesn't get you elected and it'd provoke massive
strikes for months.

The government would rather accumulate debt for 20 years than cut any pension.
Then the next generation has to deal with unfunded pensions and trillions of
debt. It's actually possible to go beyond recoverable and collapse because of
the non elasticity, this has happened before historically.

~~~
RobertoG
>"Then the next generation has to deal with unfunded pensions and trillions of
debt"

That doesn't make any sense. The next generation could have enough real
resources or not. If they have they will be OK, if they don't they will have a
problem. Real resources in the future come from investment now, not from
"saving money".

Saving money makes sense in a personal perspective, but not as a nation.

~~~
user5994461
You can't save money personally. The nation takes 20% of your gross salary to
pay retirees. You don't have a choice.

In exchange, the nation promises to give you 80% of your last average salaries
as a monthly income after you retire (in half a century) until the end of your
life.

These numbers are not linked to real resources and are not adjusted
periodically.

------
stevenwoo
I got blocked by the paywall, but the same article is here:
[https://www.mercurynews.com/2017/12/23/i-hope-i-can-quit-
wor...](https://www.mercurynews.com/2017/12/23/i-hope-i-can-quit-working-in-a-
few-years-a-preview-of-the-us-without-pensions/)

~~~
dang
OK, we've changed to that from
[https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/i-hope-i-
can...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/i-hope-i-can-quit-
working-in-a-few-years-a-preview-of-the-us-without-
pensions/2017/12/22/5cc9fdf6-cf09-11e7-81bc-c55a220c8cbe_story.html). Thanks!

------
cmurf
_Today, Social Security provides only enough for a bare-bones budget, about
$14,000 a year on average._

Republicans: This is too much money, we can't afford it, it's take from the
rich, give to the poor, these social programs need to end. Grandma deserves to
die under a bridge by herself, it's her own fault she didn't work harder or
save more.

Me: A bullet to the head of the aging is more ethical than the Republican
prescription. Yes, absolutely take the money from the wealthy and keep grandma
off the street. Jesus...

~~~
clackanon
I'm not saying I have a better answer, but wealth redistribution is theft.

That's every bit as immoral as leaving grandma on the street.

~~~
chrisbennet
When the 8 richest men have as much wealth as the poorest 50% of the planet
one might conclude that wealth has _already_ been redistributed.

------
Kyragem
Yet these old folks all voted for trump/GOP. Good luck trying to make a living
when they cut social security next year.

~~~
sumedh
They voted for Trump because he was saying he is going to bring back jobs
while Clinton was not exactly sure what her platform was.

If I am a 50 year man who lost his job, I am going to vote for Trump.

It is just amazing that lot of people including you and Clinton don't
understand this simple point.

~~~
aaomidi
Oh we do. It's just saying you're going to do something vs actually doing it
is much different.

It surprises me that Trump supporters can't see beyond words. Hopefully after
these four years you will understand that jobs are going to be going away.
There is essentially no way to move time backwards to when technology was at
its infancy and there were hundreds of jobs.

Instead of supporting candidates who give people a false hope of steel jobs
think about different systems to support everyone in the upcoming job
armageddon.

~~~
sumedh
I am not a Trump supporter, I am not even American, I am just a neutral
observer so I can see things without the tribe mentality.

> It surprises me that Trump supporters can't see beyond words.

What was the alternative, Clinton was not sure what her platform was and I
agree with you, some of her words were very clear, calling the Trump voter a
deplorable. That is not how you win elections.

If you are a 50 year old guy who worked hard all his life and then lost his
job because the factory went to China are you going to vote for a guy who says
he will bring back jobs or are you going to vote for a lady who could not
figure out what exactly was her message (yet was in the news for her
controversies) and calling you a deplorable. The choice is simple you will
vote for the guy who says he will bring back jobs.

Saying Trump is all words is not the argument you can make when the general
public have been hearing empty words from establishment politics for many
years and yet making deals to ship their jobs overseas.

------
jstewartmobile
The fundamental problem with pensions, however you arrange them, is that no
one has a crystal ball.

If you were FDR, how could you possibly know that average person will live 10
years longer, or that we're going to end up with birth control and a
consequent demographic cliff?

~~~
microcolonel
> _how could you possibly know that average person will live 10 years longer_

This is not really what happened though, people who made it to working age
generally did not live that much longer.

~~~
jstewartmobile
So you're saying that they were offering a pension with the expectation that
most people would die before they could claim it?

Not so much a dispute as a clarification...

~~~
microcolonel
I'm saying that life expectancy at birth is a misleading statistic when it
comes to gauging the ratio of inputs to outputs on pension programs of any
sort.

------
marcoperaza
Defined benefit plans, i.e. pensions, are a total disaster. They are premised
on a fantasy: that the pension fund will make enough money on the market to to
pay its liabilities, or that the backing entity will bail it out if not. Those
are bad assumptions. The result is pension funds going broke across the
country, and it's just getting started.

Defined contribution plans, 401k's and such, are much more sensible. You set
aside a percentage of your income, your employer throws some in for you as
well, and you decide how to invest it. You decide what level of risk you want
to take with your future wealth, and you reap the gains and losses.

~~~
jstewartmobile
I'm not sure 401ks are so great. Many charge ridiculous management fees for
funds that track mundane things like the S&P 500, but if you want that
employer match, no way around it.

Mostly a case of perfectly intelligent people throwing wads of money into the
market on autopilot because that's all the 401k lets you do. Lambs to the
slaughter!

edit: Example: Back when I was on 401k, was into a S&P500 fund that had an
expense ratio over 1.5%. It may not sound like much, but that's compounded
year-after-year. All of the other funds the 401k allowed had equally
scandalous expense ratios.

After starting a business, I rolled over into an IRA. Switched to a different
S&P500 fund with expense ratio of 0.09%. Same curve, but I keep more of my
money.

It would be nice if people had more latitude in what they could put their
retirement into--especially when it comes to tangible things, like buildings
or equipment--that you can get some value out of even if the market happens to
be down when you retire.

~~~
nunez
Yeah the only time it makes sense to have a 401k is if your company matches
your contributions.

~~~
jstewartmobile
Don't they all have a match?

It would be nice if people could keep the match _and_ have more control over
their portfolios. Buy & sell stocks, bonds, commodities, etc. whenever instead
of a _very_ small basket of mutual funds that can only be juggled a few times
a year.

~~~
brewdad
My wife's doesn't have a match per se. Instead the company contributes a lump
sum annually that amounts to about 5% of her income. She wouldn't have to
contribute anything to get this money and it doesn't count against her annual
cap. It is accounted for separately from her contributions, so might
technically not be a part of her 401k.

------
friedButter
Is retirement planning (Live "below your means" and put in 20-30% or more of
your salary towards long term investments), and family support (you fund your
kids education and parents post retirement needs, and your kids fund your post
retirement needs and your grandkids education) such an alien concept for
Americans? When you manage it internally, instead of paying interest to a
bank, you just have lost opportunity costs of investment within the family.

AFAIK, most Asian countries do work this way. Given American salaries, this
should be very easy to manage in US

~~~
ajmurmann
There is lots of Americans who barely get by. I recommend taking a look at
"Nickeled and Dimed" by Barbara Ehrenreich. So many people simply cannot
afford to put that much money aside. To the point of family support: Many
Americans move across state lines a few times during their lifetime. That very
much weakens family bonds. On top of that it's much harder to take care of
your parents alone while your siblings live in different states. It in fact
also makes having children harder.

~~~
brightsize
++1 for "Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America". A fascinating
read, it's the narrative of writer Barbara Ehrenreich as she goes undercover
and participates in the minimum-wage economy in the US. It recounts not just
her time on the clock, but equally the trials and trade-offs of simply
surviving on such incomes.

------
friedButter
> federal judge agreed that McDonnell-Douglas had illegally considered the
> pensions in its decision to close the plant. The employees case, presented
> by attorneys Joe Farris and Mike Mulder, showed that the company had tracked
> pension savings in its plant closure decisions

WTF! So a company is not allowed to consider costs in a cost cutting decision?
Was this not a conscious risk an employee took by accepting a job on the
chance of pension received if they were not fired before retirement? How is it
different from buying a ton of stocks of failing companies and then suing if
the price crashes further?

~~~
newfoundglory
It's more like the risk assumed by taking a job and expecting a salary - the
company has to pay you for your work, even if they would rather not.

~~~
JumpCrisscross
> _It 's more like the risk assumed by taking a job and expecting a salary_

Not really. The case doesn’t seem to involve the company trying to default on
existing obligations. It involves them projecting future costs and deciding
whether to carry them. This is akin to laying off an employee, something most
states freely permit, more than defaulting on pay for work already done.

~~~
defined
I just see it as making promises (pensions) the company was not committed to
keep. I'm sure the judge didn't use the word "mendacity " lightly or
unadvisedly.

~~~
JumpCrisscross
The case [1] is an interesting skim. Section 510 of ERISA says “[i]t shall be
unlawful for any person to discharge ... or discriminate against a participant
or beneficiary for ... the purpose of interfering with the attainment of any
right to which such participant may become entitled under the plan (or ERISA)”
(¶ 219).

Closing a plant to save money isn’t _per se_ illegal (¶ 222). The employer
just had to show they had a legitimate reason for closing the plant (¶ 223).

Instead, they kept talking about how the pension plan had _nothing_ to do with
the plant’s closure (¶ 226). That was not credible (¶ 263). (The plant’s
employees had helped lobby for a new F-15 contract (¶ 15). There may have been
political reasons the company couldn’t say “pension costs factored into our
decision, though other reasons were prominent, too”.)

Since the “Defendant was in the best position to put forth the actual reasons
for its decision, if in fact such reasons were legitimate” and it “repeatedly
failed to do so, engaging in a pattern of discovery abuse and refusal to
respond to proper inquiries by both Plaintiffs and the Court“ (¶ 257) the
plaintiffs won (§ 4).

It is unclear how cleanly this unusual case generalises to the claim made in
the original article.

[1] [https://law.justia.com/cases/federal/district-
courts/FSupp2/...](https://law.justia.com/cases/federal/district-
courts/FSupp2/162/1262/2319718/)

 _Disclaimer: I am not a lawyer. This is not legal advice._

