Word: pensioned
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...discuss new challenges to the role of profits in Western economies. Almost without exception, the speakers testified to the pressures and pinches now afflicting the profit system. In some instances, most notably Sweden, Socialist governments are levying confiscatory taxes on corporate profits and insisting upon huge contributions to pension funds, which in turn are being used to buy up the companies; "fund Socialism" was the term Swedish Economist Erik Lundberg employed to describe the process. In Britain, the Labor Party's left wing continues to demand the nationalization of shipbuilding, aircraft production and banking-in disregard of the fact...
...average, Swedish workers take 22 days per year of sick leave (for which they get 90% of their regular salary) and pay $3.40 at most for each visit to an out-patient clinic. On retirement at age 65, an industrial laborer earning $11,250 annually is entitled to a pension of $8,726. In pursuit of new ways to ease the Angst of life, a local politician actually proposed that the government provide free sex partners for the lonely...
...situation is not really that simple. Pension funds are indeed running short in many cities, but the contractual commitment to pay the pensions remains. High pensions and other fringe benefits have, in part, forced New York City into its continual flirtation with municipal bankruptcy. The city has long had a cozy relationship with its police, firemen's and sanitationmen's unions. But last week even New York's militant unions faced up to reality: 67 of them, representing 161,000 of the city's 247,000 employees, accepted a two-year, "no cost" contract that provides...
Such a gravy train actually exists. It is called the Central States, Southeast and Southwest Areas Pension Funds of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, and it is a main source of the bare-knuckled union's awesome power. But last week the Internal Revenue Service challenged that power by canceling the fund's tax-exempt status, retroactive to Jan. 31, 1965. The IRS will surely have to defend its decision in court, but so far it has not even announced officially that it has changed the fund's status...
Shaky Ventures. The IRS got involved because it is empowered to cancel a pension fund's tax exemption if trustees have misused the fund's assets to the detriment of pensioners. Over the years, the Teamsters' fund has been accused constantly of doing exactly that. Since its inception in 1955, the fund has been notorious for making large loans to shaky business ventures, many of them controlled by Mafia chieftains who are cozy with Teamster bosses. Investigators from time to time have turned up instances of kickbacks to union officials or underworld figures for arranging loans...