crank wrote:In the US, woman whose husbands worked get Social Security. Pensions would also go to a widow. But, if you never worked, or had a husband who did, you get no SS. Pensions have been attacked in all kinds of ways, and employees have to contribute a lot more, and it isn't uncommon for them to lose it all so to games played in mergers and acquisitions, in hostile takeovers, in companies going bankrupt, etc. The levels are very dependent on salaries and years of employment.

As for executives and taxes, there are all kinds of games played, easy to do when a great deal of the compensation is in stock options. Since the early eighties or so, exec pay went from about 30 to 40 times the median earnings of a companies employees, to 300 to 400 and more now.

Scot Dutchy wrote:Here your company pension goes with you. It has been that way for years. Your state pension depends on the number of years you have lived in this country.

Briton wrote:Not particularly as far as this character's output goes; more par for the course.

mrjonno wrote:Democracy is in serious danger of taking humanity to economic ruin and even extinction. It's role in the past was not to choose government but to provide a stable society in the way that dictatorships have always failed to do. Society has simple become too complex for every to have a say regardless of qualification

Agrippina wrote:

crank wrote:In the US, woman whose husbands worked get Social Security. Pensions would also go to a widow. But, if you never worked, or had a husband who did, you get no SS. Pensions have been attacked in all kinds of ways, and employees have to contribute a lot more, and it isn't uncommon for them to lose it all so to games played in mergers and acquisitions, in hostile takeovers, in companies going bankrupt, etc. The levels are very dependent on salaries and years of employment.

Luckily here, pensions go with you to new jobs, the law doesn't allow companies to mess around with people's earnings. Also "pension funds" are separate entities so even if the company goes broke, the pension fund survives. It's all very strictly protected under the law. Even if you're fired from a job (and that's extremely difficult so you have to do something really bad), you still get your pension, and it will be paid out to you, in full, including the company's contribution and growth. Barry started out at the Prudential when he was 18, he worked for their London office for a year when he travelled, and in the early 90s it was taken over by another insurance company (under the boycotts the Pru pulled out of South Africa, so it was bought out). His pension went with him. He retired with 45 years' service and full salary as his pension. If he dies first, I get the pension as a widow.

Now though because of the onerous labour laws that make it almost impossible to fire anyone, companies employ people on contract rather than as employees, so their contract can be revoked if something happens that would make them get fired, or be retrenched under a full employment contract. They get paid more to make up for the lack of pension contributions, and are expected to make their own arrangements.

As for executives and taxes, there are all kinds of games played, easy to do when a great deal of the compensation is in stock options. Since the early eighties or so, exec pay went from about 30 to 40 times the median earnings of a companies employees, to 300 to 400 and more now.

That's just disgusting. I did a quick look around for figures here. It seems the average managing director earns about 10 times that paid to someone in a clerical job, like a payroll clerk. It varies from city to city though. It costs more to live in Johannesburg than in Durban, so people get paid more.

mrjonno wrote:wisdom of the crowd?

Beyond a handful of people the more people involved in making a decision the worst it generally will be

The wisdom of the crowd effect is easily undermined. Social influence can cause the average of the crowd answers to be wildly inaccurate, while the geometric mean and the median are far more robust.

crank wrote:

Agrippina wrote:

crank wrote:In the US, woman whose husbands worked get Social Security. Pensions would also go to a widow. But, if you never worked, or had a husband who did, you get no SS. Pensions have been attacked in all kinds of ways, and employees have to contribute a lot more, and it isn't uncommon for them to lose it all so to games played in mergers and acquisitions, in hostile takeovers, in companies going bankrupt, etc. The levels are very dependent on salaries and years of employment.

Luckily here, pensions go with you to new jobs, the law doesn't allow companies to mess around with people's earnings. Also "pension funds" are separate entities so even if the company goes broke, the pension fund survives. It's all very strictly protected under the law. Even if you're fired from a job (and that's extremely difficult so you have to do something really bad), you still get your pension, and it will be paid out to you, in full, including the company's contribution and growth. Barry started out at the Prudential when he was 18, he worked for their London office for a year when he travelled, and in the early 90s it was taken over by another insurance company (under the boycotts the Pru pulled out of South Africa, so it was bought out). His pension went with him. He retired with 45 years' service and full salary as his pension. If he dies first, I get the pension as a widow.

Now though because of the onerous labour laws that make it almost impossible to fire anyone, companies employ people on contract rather than as employees, so their contract can be revoked if something happens that would make them get fired, or be retrenched under a full employment contract. They get paid more to make up for the lack of pension contributions, and are expected to make their own arrangements.

As for executives and taxes, there are all kinds of games played, easy to do when a great deal of the compensation is in stock options. Since the early eighties or so, exec pay went from about 30 to 40 times the median earnings of a companies employees, to 300 to 400 and more now.

That's just disgusting. I did a quick look around for figures here. It seems the average managing director earns about 10 times that paid to someone in a clerical job, like a payroll clerk. It varies from city to city though. It costs more to live in Johannesburg than in Durban, so people get paid more.

Pension funds are supposed to be funded, kept separate from the rest of the corps finances, and there are laws and regulations protecting this. And they've proven ineffective for a lot of folks. Bankruptcy courts and other court proceedings have found ways to violate this, plus, those running the finances of some funds have done so in quite self-serving ways, to the detriment of the fund, and essentially against the laws and regs, and few, if any, have suffered consequences for this. If interested, see what they did with Detroit municipal employee pensions. I don't remember the details, it was depressing and done by folks who clearly thought the profits of a few creditors was more important than the lives of thousands and thousands of people.

Scot Dutchy wrote:Must have been the Dutch influence in SA Aggie. We are exactly the same. There is an iron curtain between them. My company was taken over by Swedish engineering company and has changed its name but the pension fund still has its original name.

Agrippina wrote:

Scot Dutchy wrote:Must have been the Dutch influence in SA Aggie. We are exactly the same. There is an iron curtain between them. My company was taken over by Swedish engineering company and has changed its name but the pension fund still has its original name.

Yes. The laws were written while we were still under Roman-Dutch law. A lot of those have been retained, because they're good laws.

Debased and de-based: that’s the condition of our political systems. Corrupted, they no longer fulfil their democratic potential. They have also lost their base: the politically engaged population from which democracy is supposed to grow. The sense of ownership has been eroded to such an extent that, for millions of Americans, Donald Trump appeared to be the best the system had to offer.

I don’t blame people for voting for him, or for Brexit: these are responses to a twisted, distrusted system. Elections captured by money, lobbyists and the media; policy convergence among the major parties, crushing real choice; the hollowing out of parliaments and other political institutions and the transfer of their powers to unaccountable bodies: these are a perfect formula for disenfranchisement and disillusion. The global rise of demagogues and outright liars suggests that a system nominally built on consent and participation is imploding.

So could we do better? Could a straighter system be fashioned from the crooked timber of humanity? This is the second of my occasional series on possible solutions to the multiple crises we confront. It explores some of means by which democracy might be improved.

Referendums on huge questions, such as our membership of the European Union, suffer from an imbalance between the complexity of the issue and the simplicity of the tool: they demand impossible levels of political knowledge.