Cash flow.

Editor,

Billionaires refuse to pay taxes because it takes an enormous amount of capital to generate enough cash flow in the financial markets to live off of a portfolio.

Defined benefit pensions pool enormous amounts of capital in pension funds and are therefore able to withstand bigger negative hits than individual retirement accounts (IRA's), which contain negligible amounts of capital by comparison.

From the perspective of a retiring worker, comparing the cash flow generating capacity of an IRA to a pension fund is a joke.

From the perspective of the capitalist class, who refuse to pay taxes and will pay workers as close to zero for their labor as they possibly can, offloading from the state to state workers the responsibility to generate cash flow in retirement is just one more pillar in the attack on labor in the USA.

Re: "Move Public Employees Into 401(k)s?" (2/27/2011)