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[Commentary] © 2003-2007 Philip Hyde, Timesizing.com, Box 622 Cambridge MA 02143 USA, 617-623-8080 -   HOMEPAGE

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Eroding Retirement ± Forced
& other pushes when you're “no longer needed”
The once-secure American pension has turned into dying on the job or dialing 800-KEVORKIAN.   The deterioration is *global (hotlink credit to Howard Benett).   Our alternative? A lifetime employment guarantee like Nucor's or Lincoln Electric's plus fluctuating reduction of the workweek to spread the vanishing work & absorb jobseekers willing to do your job for less - plus automatic OT-to-OJT conversion - so everyone can easily win good pay & pension.   Note the Timesizing.com Party's policy on retirement: retirement at any arbitrary, fixed age is a blank check on society and nature has no blank checks. However, retirement is only a byproduct of worksharing blocked by a frozen workweek. Mandatory retirement is designed to open up jobs for younger people in a frozen-workweek economy, thus wasting the wisdom of the old, disincentivizing longer life, guilt-loading the young, and, via the frozen workweek, barring any free-time benefits from new technology, free time being the most basic, fundamental and sine-qua-non freedom.   Herewith, clippings on the issue -

1/15/2004  & more recent dates -   eroding retirement - we continue our coverage of eroding retirement on our omnibus badnews page to speed up diagnosis and leave more time for the cure - we'll park material here only if it gets lengthy in coverage or commentary -

1. Retirees face pinch on benefits - Costs surging; many firms halt programs, Boston Globe, front page.

2. [Cases in point -]
   United and Delta increase pressure on employees for concessions, NYT, C1.
   [Cutting one out of the pair -]
   UAL seeks to shift some costs of medical benefits to retirees, WSJ, A2.
   [Embedded -]
   A call for coverage, pointer (to D5), WSJ, A2.
   A federal panel urged the government to design a health-insurance plan for all Americans.
   [Compare front page -]
   The U.S. should provide, pointer (to D5), WSJ, A1.
   ...health insurance to all Americans by the end of the decade, a federal advisory panel said.
   [Compare section frontpage -]
   Burden of the uninsured, pointer (to D5), WSJ, D1.
   If the U.S. doesn't provide health insurance to all Americans by the end of the decade, the social and economic consequences will be grave, a federal medical advisory panel said.
   [Note that the figure of 43m Americans without health insurance is now over 3 years out of date, 11/20/2000, and now 18,000 Americans die every year because they have no health insurance (Bill Moyers' NOW, 1/16/2004). Target -]
   U.S. is urged to provide health insurance for all, WSJ, D5.

• Pension Benefit Guaranty Corp., pointer (to A4), WSJ, front page.
  ...will post a long-term deficit of over $10B, a congressional critic of Republican pension policy said [Rep. George Miller (D-Calif.)].

12/31/2003   eroding retirement, as documented in the Wall Street Journal & NY Times -

• Corporate pensions face pressure despite stock rally, by Mary Walsh, NYT, C1.
  This year's stock market rally has added more than $100B to corporate America's depleted pension funds, but even that has not been enough to offset forces that continue to weaken the funds. ...Their obligations to their workers have spiraled up at an even faster rate than stocks have risen [because] as the baby boom generation ages, many more people are starting to claim their money....
  [Compare some good news for employees -]
  Judge rules against US Airways on calculating pilots' pensions, NYT, C1.
  [and]
  America West pilots ratify a 3-year contract, AP via NYT, C4.
  ...The contract that won approval...extend[ed] retirement benefits. [It] also includes a 7% annual contribution to the pilots' retirement fund.

For earlier retirement stories, click on the desired date -