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It would have been the first pro-labor reform since the landmark 1935 Wagner Act, letting workers for the first time bargain collectively with management on even terms. Though modest by comparison, it promised progress at a time organized labor is virtually impotent, because union bosses, like Democrats, side more with business than their own rank and file.
Compounded by huge budget cuts, layoffs, and other social sacrifices, American workers face greater poverty, extended hard times, disenfranchisement, and bleaker futures. Moreover, their pensions are under attack. In December 2010, the Brookings Institution's Douglas J. Elliott headlined, "State and Local Pension Funding Deficits: A Primer," saying:
By some measures national shortfalls exceed "$3 trillion or more than two years' worth of state and local tax revenues." Today's economic crisis revealed "the severity of the investment risks by very substantially increasing the gap between the value of (pension) assets accumulated (and) the value of pension promises" already made. Major underfunding and eroded investments are core issues of the problem. No easy solutions can resolve them.
Even at today's overvalued levels, "the stock market would have to almost triple" to close deficits "as measured using risk-free discount rates." Reforms are also needed, including in "accounting and actuarial rules so that state and local pension plans report liability levels and deficits that are consistent with economic reality," such as discounting "the uncertainty of the liabilities rather than the expected return on the assets" that don't materialize in hard times.
A Final Comment
Working Americans, especially middle class ones, are being downsized toward extinction through loss of high pay/good benefit jobs, labor rights, political empowerment, standard of living gains, personal freedoms, and retirement futures.
Replacing private pensions with 401(ks), IRAs and similar schemes failed. Public pensions now face a similar fate, states wanting liability shifted from them to workers, leaving them vulnerable on their own. It's consistent with destructive neoliberal "reforms," wanting all public benefits eroded and eliminated. The scheme is venal and underhanded - to create a ruler - serf society, America reduced to third world status super-wealth and growing poverty extremes. Bipartisan political support endorses it.
Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago and can be reached at Email address removed. Also visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com and listen to cutting-edge discussions with distinguished guests on the Progressive Radio News Hour on the Progressive Radio Network Thursdays at 10AM US Central time and Saturdays and Sundays at noon. All programs are archived for easy listening.
http://www.progressiveradionetwork.com/the-progressive-news-hour/ .
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