Richard Wolff - About Pensions

Richard Wolff starts off by talking about pensions. A Pension is “a sum of money set aside out of a worker’s pay, week after week over a period of time a worker is paid employed so that when that person retires,” that person is “able to get a sum of money to allow him or her to have a decent life” after working for a number of years. Over the years employees bargain with their employers, in which the employee asks for a raise but the employers remove some money from their pension. Unions have agreed to stop asking for wage increases and benefits in return for a pension. Their was also an agreement between the employers and the employees that both would contribute to the pension. But the politicians did not have to put the money into the pensions this causes them not to tax the rich and the corporations making them look good but in reality they were not contributing to the pensions. When the workers go on strike, the politicians are forced to pay the workers’ pensions but to do that they have to tax the rich and the corporations. The politicians do not want to do that because that will create enemies that they do not want. So instead the politicians state that the pensions the workers have are unfair and they do not deserve it so these politicians threaten to remove the pensions. This shows how the upper class and the politicians put economic hardships on the working class. Wolff also talks about Bank of American’s decision to spend 2.43 billion dollars to settle accusations about them misleading investors during the height of the economic crash in 2008. They gave that money to the people who lost money investing. This is not the first time big private banks have been caught doing things that they should not be doing. Another example is they charged people illegally, for example discover credit card paid two hundred million dollars in refunds to people who paid extra for services they did not need or want. Richard brings in a guest, Juan