Thursday, November 21, 2013

Paying for the feather-nesting of the rich

David Cote, the CEO of Honeywell, has more than $134 million in his personal retirement fund. The loudest calls for Social Security cuts are coming from CEOs who will never have to worry about their own retirement security.  Fix the Debt campaign, which is spending tens of millions of dollars on slick PR tactics to garner public support for cutting popular programs like Social Security and Medicare. More than 135 chief executives have signed up as Fix the Debt spokespeople.  Business Roundtable, a 40-year-old club for about 200 of America’s most powerful CEOs, wants everybody to work until age 70 before they can get Social Security. Business Roundtable CEOs have retirement accounts worth $14.5 million on average. That’s enough to generate a monthly retirement check of $86,043 starting at age 65. By contrast, the average monthly Social Security check is only $1,237. These CEOs are also shortchanging their own workers’ pension funds. General Electric CEO Jeffrey Immelt, for example, has made his employees’ future less secure by building up a nearly $22.6 billion deficit in the company’s retirement fund.

 There are far more effective ways to ensure Social Security’s sustainability than cutting benefits or making the elderly work til they drop. One of the ways would be to lift the cap on wages subject to Social Security taxes. Right now, just the first $113,700 of an American worker’s wage income is subject to this 12.4 percent payroll tax. The Congressional Budget Office estimates that if this cap were eliminated, it would do reduce Social Security’s projected shortfall by three times as much as raising the retirement age to 70. It’s not hard to figure out why these powerful CEOs aren’t supporting that change. They’d have to pay way more into the system. For example, Cote received an unusually large cash payout in 2011 of $25.1 million. If the cap didn’t exist, he would’ve paid $2.6 million in Social Security taxes instead of the maximum for that year of $11,107.

CBS anchor, Scott Pelley, interviews Lloyd Blankfein, CEO of Goldman Sachs, who made $69 million the year going into the failure of the finical system, took Billions of taxpayer dollars to "save" another bank and then received another $16 million plus bonus the year following the fiscal failure. CBS' Pelley asks Lloyd what the USA should do about its debt and Lloyd answers that the feds need to cut Social Sec. and Medicare. Pelley smiles and says thank you. End of Interview. End of the media's scrutiny.

Taken from here 

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