-----Original Message-----
From: Carl Remick <cremick at rlmnet.com>
To: 'lbo-talk at lists.panix.com' <lbo-talk at lists.panix.com>
>But the USA account is still a defined *contribution* rather than a
>defined *benefit* plan, no? IMO, anything that doesn't conform to the
>idea of defined benefits doesn't deliver real security and isn't
>progressive.
Hmm...the Teamsters fought a strike with UPS partially over the issue of controlling capital with the possibility of expanding payments beyond defined benefits. UPS argued that since the stock market was doing well and could deliver the defined benefits promised, they had no need to keep contributing beyond that point. The Teamsters argued that it was better for working class folks to control a set amount of capital with fixed funds contributed by business - with any speculative surplus going to the advantage of the working class controllers of the capital.
Now, a Teamster-controlled pension fund does spread the risk and there are definite progressive advantages to risk spreading, but don't confuse that with defined benefits.
Obviously, the most progressive approach would be to massively expand Social Security into a full government pension fund as a replacement for all forms of private pensions and savings plans. That would achieve both redistribution and risk spreading (what makes Social Security a decent progressive program to begin with). Combined with expanding taxes for the funds to all income, that would be a great improvement.
But the point is not that the USA accounts don't do that - we'd have elected Wellstone or someone even more progressive to be there - but that far from being the stepback to privatization that many feared from Clinton's proposal, the USA accounts are a more progressive alternative to the present IRA-401K system of private saving accounts.
They could be better, but anything that transfers cash (as opposed to a tax break) from the income tax system to working class folks is progressive. Just because government spending is not conducted through the Department of Health and Human Services does not erase the fact that economic redistribution is occuring.
--Nathan