In a report released late Thursday—A Tale of Two Retirements—the Institute for Policy Studies demonstrates how inequality follows us into right into our golden years, or as the subtitle states: “As Working Families Face Rising Retirement Insecurity, CEOs Enjoy Platinum Pensions.” Co-authors Sarah Anderson and Scott Klinger point to some startling statistics. Okay, okay, you’re probably not going to be startled, but even though they aren’t surprising, they are still shocking:
Just 100 CEOs have company retirement funds worth $4.7 billion — a sum equal to the entire retirement savings of the 41 percent of U.S. families with the smallest nest eggs.
This $4.7 billion total is also equal to the entire retirement savings of the bottom:
- 59 percent of African-American families
- 75 percent of Latino families
- 55 percent of female-headed households
- 44 percent of white working class households
That’s not all.
On average, the top 100 CEO nest eggs are large enough to generate for each of these executives a $253,088 monthly retirement check for the rest of their lives.
- Among ordinary workers, those lucky enough to have 401(k) plans had a median balance at the end of 2013 of $18,433, enough for a monthly retirement check of just $101.
- Of workers 56-61 years old, 39 percent have no employer-sponsored retirement plan whatsoever and will likely depend entirely on Social Security, which pays an average benefit of $1,239 per month. [...]
With nearly $3 billion in special tax-deferred accounts, Fortune 500 CEOs stand to gain enormously from Trump’s proposed tax cuts on top earners. [...]
The retirement asset gap between CEOs mirrors the racial and gender divides among ordinary Americans.
The 10 white male CEOs with the largest retirement funds hold a combined $1.4 billion, more than eight times more than the 10 CEOs of color with the largest retirement assets and nearly five times as much as the top 10 female CEOs.
Andrea Germanos at Common Dreams points out that the IPS report arrives just after the publication of an analysis by Quartz which found that Trump's 17 cabinet-level choices together have more wealth than the least wealthy 43 million American households. That is more than one-third of the 126 million U.S. households combined.
There are 20 pages of details in the IPS report.
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At Daily Kos on this date in 2006—NY Times Self-Censorship, AKA "the President's Press:
Whether Bush's secret order to eavesdrop on Americans constitutes an impeachable offense is debatable. Whether The New York Times has betrayed the American people is not.
The White House asked The New York Times not to publish this article, arguing that it could jeopardize continuing investigations and alert would-be terrorists that they might be under scrutiny. After meeting with senior administration officials to hear their concerns, the newspaper delayed publication for a year to conduct additional reporting. Some information that administration officials argued could be useful to terrorists has been omitted. link
Let's get this straight. The NY Times has this story which, as it reports, has been confirmed by a dozen officials. It possibly had this information prior to the election. And when the White House asks pretty please can you not let the American people know we're destroying their civil rights, the NY Times says "sure"? Because, you know, Americans don't need to be informed as they go to the polls. Better to keep them ignorant and scared--and Republican. The NY Times and the White House yank out the tired "national security" excuse for delaying the article's publication. But does disclosing the fact the government is spying on its citizens really tip off terrorists?
On today’s Kagro in the Morning show: The NC Gop’s legislative coup rolls on. Where’s ours? Are “faithless electors” really another kind of coup? Or are they just demanding 2-factor authentication for Trump? The family tree of Trump’s so-called “alt-right” shares roots with Dylan Roof.
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