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Politics : View from the Center and Left -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: TigerPaw who wrote (10105)	1/27/2006 6:09:24 PM
From: Lane3	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 541777

1) An inheritable residual of salary, like the social security used to be. I think that one's a non-starter. I imagine that virtually everyone would prefer to take their salary money upfront than to defer it for their heirs. 2) A program by which employees gain ownership in the company. Companies often have employee stock option plans now. How would this be better?

To: TigerPaw who wrote (10105)	1/27/2006 6:13:17 PM
From: TimF	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 541777

1) An inheritable residual of salary, like the social security used to be. What does that mean? Trying to come up with what you might mean I can only guess that you are talking about some inheritable defined benefit pension. Or perhaps a pension that only takes effect after it is inherited. I suppose I don't have a problem with either of those methods of compensation if they can be made to work and if people agree to them, but I don't see why they should be legally mandated. I don't see them as making things more fair, and I certainly see the mandate as making people less free. Absent a mandate I don't think such programs will become common. The movement is more away from defined benefit pensions than to them. Also what if the pension plan goes bust? 2) A program by which employees gain ownership in the company. There are all sorts of employee stock plans already. (I.E. stockholder dividends would eventually buy out the stock itself which would revert to the current workers). That's not a dividend. That is a mandatory stock repurchase combined with an employee stock grant. In other words you are forcing the owners of the company to sell over time, and than giving the stock as compensation to employees. I don't like the plan but my criteria for what I like are of course very different than yours. Leaving off ideological/philosophical objections for now - What if the company goes bust? No one inherits anything if the stock is worthless. What if the employee sells his stock? The heir will not inherit it. I don't see how this plan results in an inheritance of the income stream from the salary. Instead it turns part of the salary in to a tradable security. That security can be inherited, but so could the case from the salary, or some asset that was bought with the case.