Why private firms don't offer lifetime pensions

Because lifetime pensions are impossible to calculate, and businesses can't take on costs that are impossible to calculate.

Category:

Nonprofits & Activism

[KIDiotequeA]

Greatly enjoyed this post. This is why I love Hoppe. His insight that democracies have an incentive structure that encourages a high time preference, makes it easily predictable that politicians will look to avoid political backlash from special interest groups by giving in, and passing the buck along to the next chap. When all costs are externalized, and you're incentivized to loot as much as you can while you're in power, ones actions tends to reflect that.

[TheLegalImmigrant05]

@KIDiotequeA Thank you

[mycaddigo]

did you get booted to the garage? or basement?

[TheLegalImmigrant05]

@mycaddigo I always record here

[Slipknotyk06]

I recently heard Stewart Acuff of AFL-CIO stating that there aren't enough unions today because, in 1955, 1/3 of all employees were unionized. The reason that only 13% of the labor force is unionized today is because most of the Private Sector Unions bankrupted their 'host' companies. American Motors and Edsel are examples, as well as the steel companies in Pittsburgh, and the one that BUILT Gary, Indiana. The vast majority of those unionized today are Public Sector.

[TheLegalImmigrant05]

@Slipknotyk06 So it stands to reason, that if even with the heavy bias in favor of unions in the current legislation the vast majority of private sector workers prefer not to unionize, then unions must not be such a great deal. But do we hear anyone talking about this?

[HAIDARAVEN]

Nation of waiters and servers,,,,the RICH love this ....soon you will have nothing to do but sell lattes to each other

[Killmodecapitalism]

Awesome video, The public sector is the only sector that can give lifetime pensions because they steal it from the private sector....people need to get with reality...

[RyderSpearmann]

In other words, the prospect of lifetime pensions is not especially sane, and once again, capitalist organs regulate themselves sanely, and are thus sustainable, whereas government pensions exist outside of a sanely sustainable practice.

You have it exactly right.

Well done.

[jimvanbeek]

This is kind of overstated. Lifetime pensions were the norm for most large companies until a few decades ago. For a large company with many employees, it is very simple to "estimate" the payments required based on longevity tables. They can do this just like insurance companies cover disasters that they can't predict. This is correct in that private companies found it very expensive to do this.

[SteamerJohanson]

Best way for public unions to ensure life time retirement without bankrupting any one would be to separate the pension from government coffers. Have a separate board looking after the funds. All the money collected from the group stays within the group and then any government is not scratching its head looking for money to pay out the retired. My union did this and went from bankruptcy to billions in profits without burdening tax payers. You get paid the amount you made in the last 5 years

[mycaddigo]

@TheLegalImmigrant05 really?