Comment by consensus1
19 hours ago
Do you remember the context of that speech? He was presenting a takeover offer to the shareholders of a poorly run company with a bunch of useless execs with no skin in the game. He may be the villain of the movie, but not of that scene. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OHnZi87272U
He's still the villain. He sounds perfectly reasonable. His criticisms of Teldar paper are plausible. He makes a compelling case for greed, but by definition, greed is excessive, it cannot be good.
His apparent reasonableness obscures the fact that he's appealing to the rapacious or covetous nature of the shareholders. He wants to override any moral objection to the fact that he's buying the company, in part, to strip the overfunded employee pensions, and by accepting his offer, shareholders get a cut. (IIRC, it's been decades since I saw the movie.)
What is the moral argument against this? What is the "rapacious and covetous" nature of the shareholders? Pensions are not 401Ks. If there is money left after benefits are paid out, that is the property of the company.
The fact that you see pension savings as the property of the company seems "greedy" to me. I'm not criticizing you. It's technically true in at least some companies. Similarly, the Social Security Trust Fund is the property of the US Government, not the future beneficiaries.
The moral failure is treating a retirement fund, and the people whose livelihoods depend on it, primarily as an opportunity for personal enrichment. Pension assets do not belong to the company in the ordinary sense. They are held in trust for the benefit of employees and retirees. The employer generally cannot withdraw funds while the plan is operating.
Wall Street was released in 1987, and the law regarding pensions has changed since then, in part to address employers reverting pension assets. As I understand it, there is a now a 50% excise tax on reversions, which are only allowed in specific circumstances. I imagine this tax is intended to discourage reversions.
Personally, I don't understand why any of the money I put away for retirement belongs to anyone but me. Usually such funds are managed by finance companies, not the employer, and the finance companies are already getting their cut, any lucky excess should come to me.
(The substance of the issue with overfunded pensions is itself a complicated separate topic, which I don't mean to oversimplify.)
3 replies →
And yet, those useless execs are better for the company and for employees then him. Much better.
Villans usually see themselves as heroes and everyone else as either stupid or sucker. That does not mean I have to adopt villans framing just because he looks charizmatic.