Are Americans best served by relying primarily on the private sector for health coverage and for benefits in their sunset years? Experts’ opinions vary.
On August 29, 2013, David Lazarus writes in the Los Angeles Times:
Like most employers, Trader Joe’s is grappling with how to look after the well-being of its workers amid difficult financial circumstances.
In May, the head of the privately held Monrovia company, with stores nationwide, sent a confidential memo to employees notifying them of changes to their health coverage, retirement program and wages.
“In these increasingly complex times, it has become necessary to relook at our programs,” wrote Dan Bane, the chief executive and chairman. “We do not do this review lightly.”
He pledged to reduce workers’ healthcare costs 10% for the remainder of the year while the company determines its response to changes under the Affordable Care Act.
Bane said Trader Joe’s would scale back its contribution to employees’ retirement plans, though the company’s contribution would remain generous by industry standards. He also set new limits on employee raises.
A Trader Joe’s spokeswoman declined to comment on the memo, which was provided to me by a company employee.
As Labor Day approaches, it’s worth noting that the challenges faced by Trader Joe’s are shared by most U.S. businesses, large and small.
Meeting workers’ present and future social-welfare needs has become a crucial and highly complex issue as healthcare costs continue to outpace inflation and secure retirements grow increasingly out of reach for many people.
These issues highlight the vulnerabilities of a system in which people’s social safeguards are tied to their employment and workers are largely fending for themselves in financial markets.
Put succinctly: Are Americans best served by relying primarily on the private sector for health coverage and for benefits in their sunset years? Or would it make more sense to pool our collective risks and look to a greater role for public programs such as Social Security and state pension plans in providing safety nets?
The reality facing America and the global community is that jobs are being destroyed and the worth of labor is being devalued by tectonic shifts in the technologies of production and by the globalization of production and constant low cost competition on a global scale. If we are to avoid socialism and prevent us from being controlled by an elite operating as the State as well as avoid the continued greed and monopoly capitalism that concentrates ownership of wealth-creating, income-generating productive capital assets in the hands of the 1 percent, then the system MUST be REFORMED. ONLY in this way can we preserve the principles of private property and liberty, while enabling EVERY citizen to build financial security over time.
We must ask ourselves why is it that corporations do not obey the laws of property? As my colleague Jerome Peloquin states: “If you and I buy 100 ties for a dollar each and and then we sell them for $2 each, we share the profits depending on the amount we invested (less expenses) NOT … you buy a share of stock and the company makes ten dollars on your dollar investment and you get SHIT! You have to bet on the value based on lies told by the company. You invest, they keep your money and give you nothing except the opportunity to gamble on Wall Street. WE NEED OUR SHARE … if they want more money let them sell more stock. Corporations are NOT persons because no one could get away with that hustle.”
The growing gap in income inequality is due to the increasingly concentrated ownership and hoarding of wealth. Anyone who seeks to own productive power that they cannot or won’t use for consumption are beggaring their neighbor––the equivalency of mass murder––the impact of concentrated capital ownership.
When you are a multi-millionaire or billionaire you are the ultimate greed “hoggist” capitalist seeking to OWN as much as possible. This is not to say that we should dishonor private property rights, but to prevent massive income inequality in the FUTURE we absolutely must finance FUTURE economic growth using financial mechanisms that empower propertyless Americans to acquire wealth-creating, income-generating productive capital assets with the earnings of the investments––just like the billionaires operate. OWNERSHIP CREATION should be the focus of our political leadership and academia. This is the path to prosperity, opportunity, and economic justice, and the means to build a FUTURE economy that can support general affluence for EVERY American.
We must also prohibit “retained earnings” that is presently permitted in our incorporation statutes. Private sector publicly-owned corporations should have to share the profits with the stockholders (i.e. investors). When monies are needed to expand and grow publicly-owned corporations, new shares of stock should be issued and sold. And access to acquiring such shares of newly issued stock should be made equally available to EVERY American citizen.
We need to apply the proven principles of insurance to the financing of FUTURE wealth-creating, income-generating productive capital assets. We need to empower individuals to acquire multiple company diversification ownership facilitated with private capital credit insurance or a government reinsurance agency (ala the Federal Housing Administration concept). The promissory note can be offset to the government’s central Federal Reserve Bank in return for the cash equivalent of the amount of the loan, less an administrative fee. The only cost to the direct lending bank in making a loan to the corporation would be the administrative fee, or about 2 percent of the loan’s principal and then another 2 percent for capital credit insurance, with an additional quarter of a percent paid to the Federal Reserve Bank to monetize the loan and give the lender the same cash as it would have had if it had actually loaned money to the corporation. The lender’s cash loaned to the company’s Employee Stock Ownership Plan (ESOP) trust and/or the individual Capital Homestead Account or “CHA” (a super-IRA or asset tax-shelter for citizens) is replenished with the Federal Reserve Bank cash. When the company pays the ESOP trust or CHA enough money to enable the trust(s) to repay the lender, the lender has to retrieve the note and pay back the Federal Reserve Bank. Thus, the loan cost would be essentially not more than 5 percent to allow ownership broadening financial capital to be invested in ownership broadening ESOP and CHA trusts to create new capitalists. Thus, national capital credit insurance replaces the requirement for pledging past savings and security (which for the most part the most Americans do not have).
If we would build a FUTURE economy using “future earnings” to finance growth, we could significantly broaden private, individual ownership of the economy’s productive capital assets and provide financial security and general affluence to EVERY American citizen, whose income in large part (in addition to the job opportunities that would be created) would be derived from the full payout of the dividend earnings they would be entitled to as per their share holdings in portfolios of diversified public corporations.
See “Financing Economic Growth With ‘FUTURE SAVINGS’: Solutions To Protect America From Economic Decline” at NationOfChange.org http://www.nationofchange.org/financing-future-economic-growth-future-savings-solutions-protect-america-economic-decline-137450624
http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-lazarus-20130830,0,2801749.column
