"I guess what John Paton means by 'not your grandpa's newspaper company' is that
grandpa had a pension."
grandpa had a pension."
-- John Gapper, Financial Times columnist, in a Twitter post about the news yesterday that Journal Register Co. has filed for bankruptcy court protection -- the second time in three years. Paton is CEO of Digital First, which runs Journal Register and MediaNews Group, Gannett's partner in the Detroit newspaper agency. Gapper rightly highlights Paton's worrisome remarks about "unsustainable" employee pension costs.
Earlier: GCI slashes planned pension contributions by 20% for 2012. Plus: Paton to lead MediaNews and Journal Register.
Pensions are a chain letter, same as Social Security. One of two things will happen.
ReplyDelete1) The company (or country) ends up sending all its money to pension funding. See GM or California or Sacramento or Greece. And even then, you eventually run out of other people's money.
2) As with a chain letter, you eventually run out of suckers.
Companies and countries have to pay their (defined) contributions up front, and eliminate the back end.
What about all those unsustainable executive pensions, salaries, bonuses, raises and golden parachutes? They always blame the nasty greedy employees, shame on you for wanted just pay for the work you do.
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