Why oh why did my 401k die?
 

Your view of business as nanny misses a few points:
1) Companies use benefits such as 401ks as recruiting tools. As many people have pointed out, any costs of the administration of those plans is part of the overall cost of employee compensation. Businesses now offer these plans as a method of remaining competitive in the employee marketplace.
2) I think employees do bear the burden of administrative costs for a 401k plan, to some extent, and in some manner. I don't know the exact mechanics, but fund admin expenses are often passed on to contributors to 401k plans. if they're not, then they are a cost of employee compensation, just like salary, health benefits, etc.
3) Further, institutional investment plans create economies of scale that individual plans do not. That's why it can be more attractive to invest in a 401k than in one's individual IRA, notwithstanding the significant differences in the maximum allowable contributions and the tax deferral. Ever try to buy an individual health plan?
4) If there were no institutional plans but rather only individual plans, there would likely be less money invested in the stock market, and therefore less capital available to corporations.
5) If people save less because it's harder and more confusing and more expensive to do so individuall, somebody is going to bear that burden when they are old and poor, and it's not going to be corporate America.

So business playing "nanny" to employees ain't entirely altruistic or wasteful.

Why oh why did my 401k die?
 

1. If businesses did not play nanny, they would have crappier workers. Pensions attract people with skills. If Johnny Jr. knows the factory did right by John Sr., he'll go work there are work hard. If Johnny Jr. knows the factory did wrong by John Sr., he'll flee the area and/or get his friends to go out on strike and/or bomb the place. The history of the owner/power holder having responsibility for the workers/dependents goes way back. I think it's wired in, to some extent. There will always be brave mavericks like you, though. Plus, under your system, I'm going to try to have kids so as to have someone take care of me in my old age. Do you really want my spawn in the world? No.

2. Why are you so against economies of scale and efficiency? What is wrong with you? You should have to grow/kill your own food and chop your own firewood. I'm trading my labor, in part, for the economies of scale I get in knowing I am getting cheaper money management than I could ever hope to get if I had some broker investing in stocks, or even through individual mutual funds.

3. IRAs suck, and someone has to play nanny. I think your view would change if your grandparents and great aunts and great uncles all moved in with you. And your wife's.

You are being more ignorant than usual. Just give it up and focus on the terrorism stuff.

Why oh why did my 401k die?
 

No, you fucking douchebag. Listen. The point is simple. Corporate nannyship stunts people from taking chances. We are winding up with a nation of people who want to do just waht they need to have $2mil put aside and slide off to golf land in old age. Thats nice fpor them, and I can't besmitrch them. But that stunts innovation. When people are left in more do or die scenarios, or forced to invest their money on their own, they tend to learn. they tend to think. they tend to be more than the vapid imbeciles who know nothing but relaity television and vesting dates. My point was larger than a mere shot at pensions. Pensions are just another vehicle which seems to allow people to avoid risk. Should everyone take risk? No. But I think a lot more of us could.

But please, Burger, sit on your ass and preach to me about how you've got ita ll figured out. You (a) don't know jack about my finance or my Maker's Mark supply and (b) are another goddamned risk aversive twit. Its easy as shit to fire darts at the guy who's picking on the conventional wisdom. Thats neither creative or brave, but utterly consistent.

Why oh why did my 401k die?
 

An alternative view is that business playing nanny frees people up to do their work. Do you want your best workers stressed out because the guy in the next office lost everything in a bad investment and now can't afford to take care of his wife, who needs someone at home all the time? Do you want her focused on her outside investments, or on solving your tricky engineering problem? Do you want the welder to be focused on welding, or on figuring out how grandma is going to eat? Law firms have all this crap for associates (food delivery, easy parking/transportation, cab fare, travel services) so that they focus on posting on boards, I mean, on work. Different people are motivated by different things. Go be your own maverick self. Don't come work for my company, or MR's, or whatever. Start your own business. Companies decide to go with pensions for business reasons. Because the market demands it. Who are you to argue?

Why oh why did my 401k die?
 

I believe, naively perhaps (likely... who am I kidding?), that everyone should aspire to be his own boss. I don't buy the wiring in of the worker/boss relationship. And I've put my money where my mouth is. I recently walked from a cushy slot to a dangerous slot for the promise of more money and freedom. People think I'm insane. But if I had to wake up for the rest of my life realizing there'd never be a day where I'd eventually be my own boss, I'd probably have to shoot myself. I can't think of a horror worse than accpeting being "worker" forever.*

* Well, unless the cash was ungodly. We're tlaking the sort of cash where the word "pension" wouldn't even enter your vocabulary.

Why oh why did my 401k die?
 

At the same time you think most people are stupid. I know internal inconsistency is your schtick, but you don't really want this.

Lots of cab drivers and shitty home contractors are their own bosses.

Why oh why did my 401k die?
 

mmmmmm chops

Why oh why did my 401k die?
 

I thought the unions demanded it, the companies had no choice at the time, and now that they do, the companies were scaling back? You're right, now I am confused. I feel like someone in Bush's cabinet is explaining Iraq to me.

Why oh why did my 401k die?
 

Yeah, we've really stifled innovation in this country through overly generous retirement plans. No one's willing to take risks at all, and we're all suffering for it. I get it Sebby. Greed is good. Greed works. But the country is filled with people like me, sitting on their ass, waiting for the retirement checks to start flowing. I'm not out there grabbing a piece of the america dream--my apologies to you for not innovating on your behalf.

We certainly don't have enough people thinking they'll hit the jackpot of the NBA, , American Idol, or the Lottery. And we're all better off for the many fools who do try.

Yeah. Innovation and risk aren't rewarded enough as it is. In fact, just the other day I was talking to Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, and some others. And they were lamenting the fact that no one wants to work hard, come up with a good idea, and sell it.

I do know this--you're apparently ready to give the standard partner speech about "associates these days".

Why oh why did my 401k die?
 

You bring up a good point. It's too fucking bad that businesses have to play nanny to employees by providing them with health insurance. Everyone should have to get their own health plans. It's like people can't find the fucking phone number for Aetna on their own.

Why oh why did my 401k die?
 

I bet Bill Gates and the Waltons have fucking enormous pensions, and protect them like a mama lion protects her cubs. The people making the most money, every place I have worked, have been the most interested in deferring compensation -- directly, by saying "hold this much back" or indirectly, by bargaining for obscenely rich non-qualified pensions. And bargain for getting their co-pays on the health plans reimbursed -- and then insist on taking up tons of time of the head of HR if those $10 reimbursements aren't processed fast enough. Or bitch that they think they are entitled to $25,218 a month in pension, not $25,132, because the bonus they got in 2001 was supposed to be included in the compensation considered in computing the pension, not excluded.

The fat cats, for the most part, care the most. And completely ignore that the guy making $25k/yr is having to decide whether or not to even GO to the dr, because specialist vists are now $50 copays.



Which is to say, you don't know what the FUCK you are talking about, and it's even more annoying than usual. And I fucking can't put you on ignore.

NK Propaganda
 

Looks like they don't really have the feel for it.

http://www.worldtribune.com/worldtri...045138889.html

SEOUL — A North Korean propaganda film about the repatriation of a spy — Lee In-Mo — who had languished for years in a South Korean prison may have a short shelf life, according to defectors now living in the South.


"What we could not believe in the movie was that Lee and others were conducting hunger strikes in the prison," said one defector about the movie.


North Korea appears on the brink of famine — July 3



"Refusing to eat was a form of resistance in the South? Boy, South Korea must be a paradise. That's what we said among ourselves"

. . .

Many North Korean defectors said their first reaction upon seeing the film was to ask how people could stay in prison for more than 10 years and remain alive? They say few people survive even three years in North Korean political prisons. Being fed three regular meals a day is utterly unimaginable.

Political prisoners die from disease and malnutrition, if not from torture, as documented by Kang Chul-Won in his best-selling book, "Aquariums of Pyongyang," which recently led him to be invited by President Bush to the White House.

Why oh why did my 401k die?
 

The guy gave me extra bacon this morning.

Why oh why did my 401k die?
 

I've said it at least a dozen times. CEO comp is way out of whack. I'm not making some snotty jackass NR argument here.

London Terrorism
 

Does anyone think this is connected with getting the Olympics? Like, maybe there were contingency plans for Paris/NY/Moscow/uh, whatever other places? Because so much happy attention would be focused on the city that won, and so the attack would be particularly upsetting?

Who knows, this may already have been discussed.