Corrupt CEOs

Every year we Illinoisans are told that we owe another $10 billion or so to the state pension fund. Wow! Those pensioners must be getting some major raises in their monthly stipends!

No, that isn't it. It is going into the fund, not into pension checks. OK, well then, let's drop the fund and just institute a pay-as-you-go system, since current workers are providing 2/3 of the funding that goes to retirees anyway.

Oh, no, we can't do that! The law says we need a fund. Well, isn't that a happy thing for Wall Street? I wonder how that law got passed.

Meanwhile, in the land of corporations, trillions of dollars that should be going to shareholders (like the giant pension funds of Illinois, California, New York and the 401K funds like Vanguard) are going to corporate buy-backs of their own stocks. They want to keep the stock price up, because CEO pay and bonuses are based on that, not performance as a corporation. Except that means that returns on the stocks due to the funds don't happen. We are told that "returns are disappointing".

What, you say? We, the taxpayers are being told we have to pay more to keep CEOs bonuses up? And then we are told to be happy that the Dow Jones is at all time highs? And then we are told to pay more to our 401Ks, because some day, far, far in the future, we will have to live off those funds.

Except who thinks that anything will improve by the time Millennials retire? The CEOs aren't suddenly going to live frugally. The corporate boards, where compliant politicians are rewarded with seats, are not going to stand up to the CEOs. Those 401Ks will be worthless to Millennials as they are to the Baby Boomers, (a lot of whom already cashed out due to unexpected expenses, giving a huge cut to the government, who enforces forced savings by that manner).

And the millennials are being groomed to expect that the massive Social Security fund should also be turned over to Wall Street.

And they are falling for it, just as George Carlin predicted.