That's just a reason why all of the benefits need to be government (and taxes on corporations to pay for them) backed things that are retained across jobs.

They don't need to be government backed, just not tied to an employer/job. Much like current retirement plans are not tied to a specific company.

401k is government backed. The name itself refers to the law that brought them into existence. Just as Roth IRAs are named for the Senator who proposed them. Without the backing of the government, your retirement plan would solely consist of what you save and you'd be taxed on it all along the way.

I'm not sure that's what was meant by government backed. The government doesn't pay for your retirement fund, a Roth IRA just doesn't charge tax on withdrawals.

My intent was the entire benefits provisioning package outsourced to the government. This way irrespective of if heath coverage (it's not really insurance, which is a separate debate), paid time off of all kinds, and all other pre-tax line items are an entirely separate income stream and go over to the government managed pool of resources.

The compensation rate for all such items might thus become far more standardized, and all of the bureaucratic conformance for such items would be there as well.

This would be an exceedingly small business friendly move as suddenly a lot of the headaches of employing someone would just be paid for with a simple 'tax'.

It would also be very worker friendly as all of those things and seniority/etc would similarly be paid for with that 'tax'.

This does assume that there's a uniform allocation of resources per employee (I know there isn't today), or that there's a standard appreciation track for employees (there isn't today)... or that there might be multiple standard ranks of benefits (which would need to be more clearly advertised in job descriptions)...

However everything really would be easier for everyone if we actually had this system; the only entities that would benefit from the status quo in a meaningful way are large corporations with enough employees to justify full time HR and legal staff.

401k's are only government backed in a weird circular way. If there were no government, they would work fine as a retirement savings plan. The government backs them only by protecting them from the government taking more of the money in taxes.

And as the other response mentions, this was more in about the idea of the government funding and controlling it.

but, isn't that like, socialism? /s

Otoh, we have far more marketers, professional writers, video editors, programmers, and people who make their own profits via YouTube etc.

And a drastic drop in birth rate should mean fewer people so favor labor.

Declining birth rate would also reduce demand for labor, not just supply, no? Assuming that the relationship between population and demand for labor is linear (probably isn't, I don't know economics).

I think it's a delayed effect. As the populace ages, people who are retired (from when birthrates were higher) will make up a larger percentage of the total population. There's some existing info on this out there, but most of what I have seen focuses on how this will impact Social Security in the US.

Birth rates in the US mean nothing if the birth rates elsewhere are high -- immigrants, legal or otherwise, will make up the difference.

I would say sure, if it werent for the fact that a lot of major corporations are currently having some of their most profitable years ever. And if you consider companies like Apple that are sitting on literal mountains of cash, this argument breaks down.

The link in my comment clearly shows that most of the profits are going to a small number of corporations. This is even more evidence that companies are more unstable (compared to period between WW2 and now).

From the article:

>In 2015, for example, the top 200 companies by earnings accounted for all of the profits in the stock market, according to calculations by Kathleen Kahle, a professor of finance at the University of Arizona, and Professor Stulz. In aggregate, the remaining 3,281 publicly listed companies lost money.

The employees of those 200 companies are in a good spot, but not the remaining 3,281. The consolidation due to vertical integration, automation, outsourcing are all resulting in reduced demand for labor, hence the lagging wages and instability.

I heard Apple is issueing bonds, since interest rates are low. Can't fathom why.

They can borrow money at a few percent interest rather than bring their profits from overseas back to the US and pay the corporate tax rate on it.

It might be an accounting deal to avoid paying higher taxes?