What Color Is Your Parachute

The "Golden Parachute". What a concept. Everyone is getting really pissed off about them. Guess what. We helped put them in place. Just like voting for public officials, when you buy a publicly traded stock, you are putting your confidence in that company. Mainly, you are placing your faith in the company's top officers and board. We knew these companies were overpaying their chief executives, but we bought the stock anyway. It was making us money. Now everything is in free fall, except those executives. They opened those golden chutes. Why didn't we mind that they were getting so much guaranteed money while we were making ours? Those contracts that they signed to get those huge payouts have been in effect before this financial crisis was visible to most of us.

What gets me, and this is an American problem, is how our legislators who are supposed to be "of the people, by the people and for the people" don't have to share in the social security mess that we are also in. I know that my government assisted retirement is not what I should be worrying about at a time like this. I should probably be more concerned with staying employed and making ends meet. But, I was reading an article about American retirement accounts losing a collective $2 trillion dollars, or roughly 20% of their value during the last year and a half.

During Congress's investigation of the financial meltdown, the House Education and Labor Committee got to hear about how our retirement funds lost all this value. There was a quote that really got under my skin. "Unlike Wall Street executives, America's families don't have a golden parachute to fall back on," said Rep. George Miller, the panel chairman. "It's clear that their retirement security may be one of the greatest casualties of this financial crisis." Hey Rep. Asshat, sir, why don't you say, "Unlike Wall Street executives and us (your elected officials)..." Remember, you aren't in the same boat with us American people either. Your parachute may not be golden, but under the separate system you guys set up so as not to rely on Social Security, you do receive an average of $60,972 per year at retirement. That is quite a bit more than Social Security pays out to most people. As of the year 2000 the average individual payout was roughly $10,200 per year. Unfortunately, that is the most recent figure I can find. I doubt it is much higher 8 years later.

My point is, maybe we should stop supporting companies that offer such lucrative payouts without performance. And, maybe just maybe, we should stop voting for people who don't care enough to reform a very broken system that effects those of us who are voting. There are still other problems in this country that need to be addressed. We need to come out of this crisis better than we are going into it. And I don't, for one second, believe that my representatives actually care about my retirement when theirs is assured to be comfortable. And Mr. Miller actually managed to sound indignant about someone else's golden parachute. That's funny.