Ahh,.....So I'm the 21st century version of the "Red Scare",...am I?
The screen name "Canary-in-the-mine" should tell you that I am rather prescient about things I construe to be ....harmful,....to working people,............especially where it seems that the powers that be are creating a status quo.
The idea is not so much about the engineered destruction of defined-benefit MEPFs, as it is about public perception of.....Wall Street's idea of what passes,...in their eyes,...for a worker "pension",.....and their ability to manipulate the parameters of those defined-contribution "schemes"...
And,...Yes, I'll keep calling them "schemes"
Would you say Wall Street, bankers , and investment firms had a...direct hand in the destruction of defined-benefit MEPFs?
Would you say they....benefitted , by eliminating large unwieldy blocks of privately-held, professionally-handled stocks and bonds under the control of a Board of Trustees answerable to a Union membership?
And,........forcing many people into tiny, little chunks of investments with no cohesive, collective power........And no guarantees, or government oversight (Let The Buyer Beware)?
Because those tiny, little investment chunks........created by Wall Street under provisions of the ERISA Act in 1974,.......are the ONLY "game" in town, once your defined-benefit pension is wrecked? Or,...at least, that's how they are....marketed to people....?
I know,........you're rolling in dough, due to your wildly successful investing......So everybody should be...celebrating this Triumph of Capitalism..........Sorry,...leave me out of this "party"...
There USED to be guarantees,....until by fiat of Congress ,..AS LOBBIED FOR by Wall Street,.....the guarantees were taken away,...and the Pension Benefit Guarantee Insurance to back up those guarantees....was de-funded to the point of crippling it's viability.......(..I use the term "Wall Street" as a euphemism for a collective bunch of bankers, investors, lobbyists, and other high-powered leeches on our banking system..)......
No one else smells a Rat?
That's why you have a Canary in the Mine........