As United is excused from paying its pensions, and taxpayers are asked to effectively provide that company with a $5 billion subsidy, perhaps there should be a corporate bankruptcy reform analogous to that imposed on individuals.
Nothing too arduous - simply examine whether the corporation's executives make more than 25% of the state's median income, and whether the company can reasonably repay more than 25% of its otherwise dischargeable debts. And, if the answer to both questions is yes, forbid discharge. Oh yes - and the corporation's executives should be required to attend credit management classes at their own expense.
Or if there might be some middle ground between transferring the obligation forever to the US tax payer or keeping it forever at full "cost" to the company? Say, reducing it and leaving it with the company or inflicting it on the US Government only until the company is again solvent?
ReplyDeleteCWD
Part of that "middle ground" might mean restoring regulations which required that companies adequately fund their pension plans, rather than continuing to defund them under increasingly relaxed Bush Administration policies.
ReplyDeleteBut my point wasn't about the bankruptcy, per se - it was about the Bush Administration's new bankruptcy bill, which imposes rigid tests to keep a lot of debts on the backs of individuals (either at full cost or possibly at a reduced cost, but keeping as much as possible in place), while continuing to let companies cast off their pension plans without any comparable regard for their ability to pay and no apparent regard for the burden on the taxpayer.