The Disappearing Pension

Jonathan Tasini
May 31, 2005

Jonathan Tasini is president of the Economic Future Group and writes his "Working In America" columns for TomPaine.com on an occasional basis.

Here’s a basic moral value: taking someone’s money without their permission is stealing. Except in America, where, if you’re a corporation that takes away someone’s pension, it’s okay. And the question is: Why isn’t the progressive movement making a huge deal out of this?

With very little public outcry, we are letting corporate America dismantle the private defined-benefit pension system. At the same time, huge salary and pension benefits are lavished on executives. Remember, pensions are deferred compensation—people put off getting money in their paychecks today because of a promise that they would receive a specific amount of money (hence, the term “defined benefit”) many years later. It’s their money, not the companies’ money. The private pension was a fundamental pillar of the American middle-class dream: If you saved now, you could still have a middle-class life in retirement, and you wouldn’t have to gamble in the stock market to do so.