By Mac Slavo
In 2014 a new Federal law made it possible for pension funds to cut benefits for their recipients. Much to the protest of pensioners, the government and numerous unions supporting the change cited pension plans that were in imminent danger of collapse, saying that the only way to save the funds was to cut benefits to potentially millions of recipients. Six months later, the U.S. Supreme Court took things a step further when they opined that the government has the right to fully seize 401(k) and pension funds that were being poorly managed.
Of course, most Americans were either not paying attention or completely ignored the ramifications of the new rules set forth by their government because, well, anyone who talks about the potential for a collapse of pension funds or the economy is, as President Barack Obama so eloquently noted in his recent State of the Union Speech, “peddling fiction.”
Except in October of last year the canary in the coal mine fell over and died when Illinois announced that the State was postponing pension payments because it ran out of money.
Fast forward a few more months and things have been taken to the next level. The Central State pension fund in Kansas became the first such fund to take advantage of the 2014 law as 400,000 Americans who depend on their monthly pension income to pay for such things as their mortgage, groceries and medical expenses saw an average of $1,400 per month sliced of their monthly benefits.
Dale Dorsey isn’t happy.
After working 33 years, he’s facing a 55% cut to his pension benefits, a blow which he says will “cripple” his family and imperil the livelihood of his two children, one of whom is in the fourth grade and one of whom is just entering high school.
Dorsey attended a town hall meeting in Kansas City on Tuesday where retirees turned out for a discussion on “massive” pension cuts proposed by the Central States Pension Fund, which covers 400,000 participants, and which will almost certainly go broke within the next decade.
“A controversial 2014 law allowed the pension to propose [deep] cuts, many of them by half or more, as a way to perhaps save the fund,” The Kansas City Star wrote earlier this week adding that “two much smaller pensions also have sought similar relief under the law, and still more pensions are significantly underfunded.”
And if you think this is the end of it, consider the words of long time teamster member Jay Perry who says the writing is on the wall:
What’s happening to us is a microcosm of what’s going to happen to the rest of the pensions in the United States.
It was all fun and games during the boom times when governments and companies promised pensioners exorbitant retirements based on an unlimited growth rate model. Now reality is setting in.
And keep in mind that this is just the first part of the coming retirement fund destruction. As we noted above, the Supreme Court ruling gives the government the “right” to step in and seize these underperforming funds.
So, the first step is to give pension funds the ability to cut benefits, which we are seeing now and will continue to see going forward as funds all over the country struggle to keep the benefits flowing. Next, the government will identify these funds as under-performing and mismanaged, at which point they will outright seize the entire industry just as they did with health care.
The pain is coming, America. You’d better be prepared to deal with the fallout.
You can read more from Mac Slavo at his site SHTFplan.com
Well maybe if the government takes the pensions over, they will supply the capital needed to continue paying out benefits. They government certainly did that with Wall Street and the banks!
Why should I as a taxpayer have to pay for someone else’s pension when I dont have one of my own. taxation without representation
Because the government took over someone else’s pension, that’s why? If they leave it alone, then OK. If they take it over then they are responsible for it. I would sure rather have my tax dollars going to pensioners than to banks!
If you want the government to do the right thing instead of just stealing money from you, then you must overthrow the government.
It’s the only solution.
All governments are, and always will be in the buisiness of stealing money from citizens. It will never change.
@Croco_Dile:disqus I am waiting on the day….this government has been way too overbearing in it use of power since 9/11
Worked 33 years, has a teen & a 10 year old & he is retired??? Where is his sense of responsibility ( if he wasn’t forced into it ). How old? 50?
Right , I will work work 47 years and most likely be forced to continue after that
Maybe he retired because he was entitled to do it. It was a deferred payment of his employment. Maybe he got another job and is not truly retired in that sense. But really he was promised for work performed his pension. He assumed he would have this income guaranteed. Why is he irresponsible? Meanwhile we had overpaid bankers and execs bailed out so they could keep on being paid millions for doing nothing useful.
“…Illinois announced that the State was postponing pension payments because it ran out of money.”
That’s Republicans running government “like a business”; steal the money out of it and bankrupt it.
It was under the “Democrat” Clinton administration the Glass Steagall Act was repealed engineering the bubble that lead to the world’s largest heist and power grab in 2008.
Political RINOs and DINOs have been pumping both private and govt Ponzi schemes for generations at the behest of their masters and they knew eventually the scams would eventually collapse under their own weight which is exactly why over a decade ago Congressional committees wrote proposals to confiscate all pensions, 401Ks and anything else they can get their paws on to redistribute what’s left. The national debt is another example of both political parties pushing a paradigm that they know will collapse and Americans never demanded true fiscal responsibility.
It ain’t the “Republicans” orchestrating the big show, it’s the usual suspects, the politicos’ handlers, who also are behind new policies instituting negative interest rates, capital controls, and bank bail-ins (like Cyprus). Sooner or later, they expect everyone to bend over.
It’s open season on American citizens. The 1%’s assault is bipartisan, but the Republicans are more rabid about it. The Democrats also play a major role in the class war.
The Democratic Party has brought us:
“Free-trade” laws that send American jobs to low-wage countries, trying to end net neutrality, no single-payer health care, trying to help the Republicans cut Social Security, refusing to prosecute the biggest financial criminals in the history of the world, claiming the right to execute US citizens on foreign soil without charging, trying, or even attempting to apprehend them, unlabeled GMO frankenfoods in our supermarkets, the NSA wiretapping all our phone and email communications, allowing the military to arrest U.S. citizens without charges and detain them indefinitely, agreeing with the Republicans to do nothing about homelessness while squandering hundreds of billions on the military, persecuting marijuana users, overturning Glass-Steagall which allowed banksters to gamble with OUR money, more nuclear power plants, brutally assaulting peaceful Occupy protesters with militarized police, agreeing with the Republican goal of endless war, jailing government whistleblowers as spies, no prosecutions of the Bush-Administration torturers, allowing the pharmaceutical corporations to gouge us, and ending welfare for starving people. And now, the TPP.
This party isn’t on our side.
My votes and donations go to Bernie Sanders and the Green Party.
Great rap sheet, you got it right. Keep in mind, the office of POTUS is only ceremonial, even Chomsky fully admitted that long ago. Real change will have to come from the bottom up, not top down, which is EXACTLY what Ralph Nader concluded several years ago. Nader knows, he gave us the Freedom of Information Act and was the most effective activist reformer in American history. He called out the leadership of both parties as Fascist Stooges – and was vilified for doing so, esp. by the Dems. Now we entering the Panopticon, there will be no political saviors. Whatever Bernie’s true loyalities are cannot be fully known as yet. However, he kowtowed to the top of the pyramid, the bankers, when he watered down an Audit The Fed bill making it virtually useless. His Wall Street Tax proposal echoes Peolosi’s 2009 Trojan global financial transaction tax proposal spearheaded by the Trilateral Commission to institute a global tax on the road to global governance. Cindy Sheehan has explained how Bernie’s voting record has supported the military industrial complex. Whether you vote for Bernie or not, don’t let your guard down and consider putting some of your energy and resources into waking up the public to the nature of the Matrix to reject TPTB’s totalitarian tip toe into a global techno feudal prison.
BTW, Ralph Nader: An Unreasonable Man is a great documentary. In the movie, we are shown that in his bid for POTUS, Nader is literally kicked out of the presidential debates, not even allowed to view the puppet show as a member of the audience despite having been given a legitimate ticket for a seat from a supporter. Anyone who truly challenges the Establishment agenda is not allowed into the Big Tent. JFK taught us that and the system has become more entrenched since then. Eisenhower not only warned us of the rise of military industrial complex, but in the same speech, he warned also of the rise of a [totalitarian] technocratic elite – facets of the same control grid owned and controlled by the banksters.
The GOP has had zero power in Illinois for decades.
The pension disaster in Illinois belongs ENTIRELY to the Democrats, who believed they could guarantee lifetime pension payments to unskilled hack state workers who produced nothing and contributed no value…because tax money would “always be there”. Until one day it wasn’t.
Former state workers receiving pensions should keep in mind: the current state workers are the only ones the unions care about, because they’re the ones who can vote in union elections. So the state legislatures, and the unions, will destroy you in the end and leave you with *nothing* before they cut one box of post-its from what current state workers get.
The Robbery continues….
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…and they keep pushing and pushing us closer to the cliff’s edge…. and we do nothing…
What about the CAFRs.They are full of it Illionis has plenty of cash in there.
People don’t know about the CAFRs…..so when is Congress going to do something about it?
Gee….was this SCOTUS decision on FOX news?
If we can’t trust j ews with our money who can we trust?
We have got to get out of this country!!
…well this is what happens (every time) when you’re a Patriotic,Flag Waving SHEEPLE …the only thing left for this Grovelling Herd is to learn to love taking it Up the Ass…Permanently! That the Obedient Sheeple couldn’t see this Abominable Betrayal coming is the absolute knee slapper!
Law only apples to certain non government employer groups – government employees are left with their massive pensions unaffected.
This is an attack on private sector union not public unions.
Hey Digital, Not all government employees get a massive pension. After 38 years of service and contemplating retiring, I will be lucky if I draw 50 percent of my salary as a pension. That is not massive.
Trump supports the idea of democracy in Israel – sounds like Ghandi on the idea of civilization in the west.
So…who managed these funds?…and year after year took hefty ‘management’ fees for the ‘service?’…. Who made sure that all of our retirements were aggregated so as to make them that much easier to steal?…Who did away with a money that was tied to the value of gold and silver, so that workers could not just save earnings that had intrinsic value. Instead they were given ‘notes’…promises to pay more paper notes…that failed to hold value thus forcing the saver to become an investor,?–Answer: bankers and other financial intermedaries; THEIR government and a bunch of dumbasses who voted for them.
If the house and car are paid for a couple should be able to get by on 500 per week. Medicare provided.
But we give Israel 4 BILLION a year.
These “pensioners” and “soon to be Pensioners” haven’t contributed to their pension and thus should not be eligible for pensions in the first place. They need to contribute to 401ks and Social Security like the rest of us tax payers!!!! … as Congress and other Federal employees should!!!