When you accept a job offer, you might be joining a startup or a speculative business. That's what I usually do. I think that in order to do something significant, I have to accept some risk.
But ten years ago, when you or someone you know joined a company as a worker, if you were offered stock options as a benefit you accepted a risky proposition. By contrast, if you accepted a retirement package or a defined-benefits pension, you got a contract, legally executable in the United States as specified in the Constitution.
I believe companies offering these pensions owe those pensions. Stockholders on the board are there for the risky possibility of a boon. Salaried employees made a square deal. Defaulting on that deal without taking some of the damage is unforgivable.
I want a law. I want the SEC to require quarterly pension fund reports from every company offering a pension. And for each quarter in which managers or board members are compensated, or for every instance where profits are distributed aside from dividends to common stockholders, they must meet their pension obligations. Any underfunding of a pension fund will be met with cash from the pockets of the management, or else their shares of the company will be sold to make up for the shortfall.
Executives have been above justice too long.
Wednesday, June 15, 2005
Ignoring the middle
Our politicians are applying their trade in a way that increases polarization and pathology. As an extreme moderate, I think the Christian Right has turned satanic, failing to recognize the impiety, arrogance and pride they express when they deny the omnipotence of their deity.
Of course God can create the universe. And of course evolution can happen by design. But it happens, and to deny it is stupid! More properly, the Fundo-Mentals deny God's ability to do more than they can imagine.
And the progressives fail themselves by creating their platform as a reaction to the right. We should be proud to practice altruism and proud to protect our families', friends' and neighbors' jobs, lives, standing. And some of the stuff being done in the name of art and liberty is pretty yucky.
But the whole government is trying to master the wedge right now, Republicans tweezing social issues apart in a way that forces people to choose between Constitutional reality and should-be-hypothetical abberations.
Democrats are scrambling to find their own wedge, something they can apply to shave membership off the big dumb block of the bare-minimum majority. But they both have momentum, and we're getting more polarized. They practice extreme rhetoric because they can't contribute in society. They can only find their place seated ABOVE us.
Of course God can create the universe. And of course evolution can happen by design. But it happens, and to deny it is stupid! More properly, the Fundo-Mentals deny God's ability to do more than they can imagine.
And the progressives fail themselves by creating their platform as a reaction to the right. We should be proud to practice altruism and proud to protect our families', friends' and neighbors' jobs, lives, standing. And some of the stuff being done in the name of art and liberty is pretty yucky.
But the whole government is trying to master the wedge right now, Republicans tweezing social issues apart in a way that forces people to choose between Constitutional reality and should-be-hypothetical abberations.
Democrats are scrambling to find their own wedge, something they can apply to shave membership off the big dumb block of the bare-minimum majority. But they both have momentum, and we're getting more polarized. They practice extreme rhetoric because they can't contribute in society. They can only find their place seated ABOVE us.
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