Suckered? I wasn't suckered into anything. I was left with no choice.
Of course you were. The "suckering" part was when they tried to convince you that a 401k was better than a pension. I remember all the hoopla that surrounded the rollout of all these "private pensions" and how the people who had them would do so much better and how if only we put all the Social Security money in 401ks every senior would be rich.
Did you know that the income Social Security is getting on their investments is better than the income on the average 401k over the past decade? This is one of the reasons why Social Security is still taking in more money than it's paying out.
Funny how you will never, ever see that little fact in any article about Social Security: that Social Security is not only solvent, but it's taking in more money than it's paying.
It won't be long before the only people left with pension plans are Union Workers.
And the right is telling that we should hate them for it instead of the corporate forces that thought they could get over on workers by giving them pensions instead of raises and then screwed them.
Yea, they may have tried to convince me. That doesn't mean I, or anyone else I know believed it for a second. Nonetheless, we have no power to "reject" such a change. It was made without our choice or input. Therefore implying that everyone who now only has a 401k was suckered is misleading, at best. I don't hate union workers for what they have fought for - I hate that "the well has been poisoned". Try unionizing in this day and age and see how far you get (cliff notes: not far at all). The only unions still around, and still able to bargain for pensions are the unions that *have* been around for a very long time.
Plus, since we're talking about a very small amount, it would not hurt all of the retirees who were suckered into 401ks and Roth IRAs instead of proper pensions.
Suckered? I wasn't suckered into anything. I was left with no choice. My company, and 1000's of others, are discontinuing traditional pensions, and replacing them with yearly contributions to employee's 401k plans. It won't be long before the only people left with pension plans are Union Workers. Read More Here: http://www.utne.com/archives/TheMysteryoftheDisappearingPension.aspx And here's a view from the other side: http://www.mrc.org/bmi/news/2006/_Pension_Promises_the_Death_of_the_American_Dream_.html
Honestly the idea of all the countries in the world being under one organization was rather boneheaded to begin with. Some countries are just too different.
People used to say this about segregation of colored people from white people. I wonder how that turned out... Hmm. Maybe we aren't "too different" after all...
"Well, it don't make the sun shine, but at least it don't deepen the shit." -- Straiter Empy, in _Riddley_Walker_ by Russell Hoban