Think Progress looks at the goals of the new "Fix The Debt" group. "Fix The Debt" is the rallying cry of a bunch of bank and insurance CEO's who believe Social Security eligibility should be raised to age 70. The Institute for Policy Studies takes a look at precisely who is urging this remedy -- as a way of avoiding raising taxes on the top earners.
Yep. You guessed it. They're people who have no need for Social Security themselves.
– The 71 Fix the Debt CEOs of public companies have average retirement assets of $9.1 million. Of these 71 CEOs, 54 participate in their company‘s retirement programs and have collective pension assets of $649 million, or more than $12 million per CEO — enough to generate a $65,873 pension check each month for life. In contrast, the average monthly Social Security check for retired workers is $1,237.
Their monthly income at retirement would be a bit more than $1,237.
– A dozen of the Fix the Debt executives have more than $20 million in their individual company retirement accounts. If each of these CEOs converted their assets to an annuity when they turned 65, they would receive a monthly check for at least $110,000 for life.
Of course they take good care of their employees, right? Hell no!
Of the 71 publicly held Fix the Debt member companies, 41 provide employee pension funds for their workers. Of these, only two have sufficient assets in their pension funds to meet their expected obligations. The rest have underfunded their worker pension funds by $103 billion, or about $2.5 billion on average.
The CEO's in question respond that, yeah but those people have Social Security.
Most of the CEO's in question were bailed out financially at the time of the Bush crash. Who paid to bail them out?
We did.
America the beautiful...
When do we get mad enough?
