Dead Peasants Insurance: a clarification

Originally posted by Darth Jello
No, I'm saying that the company gets payed regardless as long as you are still an employee, even if you're killed off the job. The scheme has statistically very lucrative returns. Aside from one case, I can't think of a company murdering an employee to collect on a policy. The horrifying thing is the principle of the matter and the fact that it is robbery of the tax payers. Also, kind of puts a new perspective on the issues of consumer safety, health reform, labor safety considering that companies are directly profiting off of death to the tune of billions annually.

You are only making it sound like it was evil. There is nothing wrong with it as long as they don't start killing their employees. 😉

How is it right to insurance someone else or their property in secret, charge the American public the premiums, and then collect when something bad happens? Isn't this the extreme of what's wrong with America? That this along with every financial product I listed is based on creating false value from failure and misfortune, profiting off it, and in the process concentrating wealth in fewer and fewer hands?

Shaky, are you being deliberately dense? The allegation is that the companies are simply being paid large amounts of taxpayers' money for the death of people who might not even work for them any longer.

Now, if you want to point out that this doesn't happen at all, then fine. But if you are trying to say that if that does happen that it is not wrong... you're being an idiot. That is companies taking money from the people for no reason. Of COURSE that's wrong.

And in fact the IRS has been fighting this kind of thing for decades.

Originally posted by Ushgarak
Shaky, are you being deliberately dense? The allegation is that the companies are simply being paid large amounts of taxpayers' money simply for the death of people who might not even work for them any longer.

Now, if you want to point out that this doesn't happen at all, then fine. But if you are trying to say that if that does happen that it is not wrong... you're being an idiot. Of COURSE that's wrong.

And in fact the IRS has been fighting this kind of thing for decades.

I work for an international company who does this. If I die, my wife gets some of the money. There is nothing wrong with that. If you don't like it, have the law changed. This is not an evil, or even wrong.

I, at first thought that Darth Jello was suggesting that companies kill their employees to get the money. That is the only why this could be evil or wrong.

Another in principle example (perhaps not as extreme). I'm going to go to an insurance broker and take out a diarrhea insurance policy naming myself as a beneficiary on every single KMC member who frequents Hooters, Wing Zone, or Del Taco, essentially hedging a bet. Now while your sitting there during half time bent into an L-shape and cursing God, I'm going to collect a couple thou for each of you.

Hell, why don't employers take divorce insurance, or cancer insurance, or heart disease insurance on their employees? Traffick accident insurance? It's all worthless hedge bets and profit off of misfortune that redistributes wealth at the expense of everyone for the reason of peoples' misfortune.

Originally posted by Darth Jello
Another in principle example (perhaps not as extreme). I'm going to go to an insurance broker and take out a diarrhea insurance policy naming myself as a beneficiary on every single KMC member who frequents Hooters, Wing Zone, or Del Taco, essentially hedging a bet. Now while your sitting there during half time bent into an L-shape and cursing God, I'm going to collect a couple thou for each of you.

Good luck with that, but it will not work.

Originally posted by Shakyamunison
I work for an international company who does this. If I die, my wife gets some of the money. There is nothing wrong with that. If you don't like it, have the law changed. This is not an evil, or even wrong.

I, at first thought that Darth Jello was suggesting that companies kill their employees to get the money. That is the only why this could be evil or wrong.

You ARE being deliberately dense. Good Lord.

Sorry, but the average person is- very reasonably- going to think that the idea that companies MAKE MONEY just because their employees have died, and that money comes straight from the taxpayer, is wrong.

They have NO RIGHT to my money! Why the hell should they profit AT ALL from the death of an employee, let alone make the money FROM THR TAXPAYER, not even the insurer. And the allegation is that these policies are taken out with the deliberate intent of simply using them to fleece the taxpayers for cash.

Sorry, Shaky, but you are being a blatant idiot here. This is as plain as it could be.

If there was a law that said that a businessman could break into your house and steal whatever he likes, would the fact that it was the law stop that from being wrong? Geez, some people...

Well, it's not directly from tax payers, it circumstantially is. So gotta correct you slightly their Ushgarak. If there were no insurance subsidies and if AIG never got bailed out, then only the premiums would be taxpayer subsidized which is still too much. Also, the premiums are not taxpayer subsidized if the employer owns the insurance company providing the policies. Considering as stated in my first couple of posts that AIG has a virtual monopoly on smaller insurers and went bankrupt, and then recieved an $85 billion dollar bailout instead of being trust busted, then yeah, right now, it all is pretty much 95% taxpayer subsidized.

Originally posted by Ushgarak
You ARE being deliberately dense. Good Lord.

Sorry, but the average person is- very reasonably- going to think that the idea that cmpanieds MKAE MONEY| justy because their employees have died, and that many comes straight from the taxpayer, is wrong.

They have NO RIGHT to my money! Why the hell should they profit AT ALL from the death of an employee, let alone make the money FROM THR TAXPAYER, not even the insurer.

Sorry, Shaky, but you are being a blatant idiot here. This is as plain as it could be.

I don't agree at all. Companies get over taxed all the time. If it wasn't for this kind of "thing". We would not have any jobs, because no one could do business. Where do you think the money goes? I have a house and food on the table. That is where the money goes. If the rich man who I work for decided to close the doors because doing business was not cost effective, then I would not have a house or food on the table.

The profit margin involved comes from the taxpayer, else a. it wouldn't happen at all and b. the IRS wouldn't care. The whole scheme only breaks even, save for the fact that the tax rebate is taxpayer funded.

Originally posted by Shakyamunison
I don't agree at all. Companies get over taxed all the time. If it wasn't for this kind of "thing". We would not have any jobs, because no one could do business. Where do you think the money goes? I have a house and a food on the table. That is where the money goes. If the rich man who I work for decided to close the doors because doing business was not cost effective, then I would not have a house or food on the table.

Pretty much everything you posted- othern than being exceptionally disturbing "obey the rich or we all suffer" gibberish- is utterly irrelevant. That you don't agree about something so blatantly and straightforwardly wrong is not relevant either- it just makes a fool of you. Shutting down abusive practice does NOT impoverish the working man. On the contrary, it benefits him, as the money as the public's in the first place.

I do not believe I am having to explain this. Taxation money should go towards the public good, not inflating the profit margins of a company via an insurance workaround.

Originally posted by Shakyamunison
I don't agree at all. Companies get over taxed all the time. If it wasn't for this kind of "thing". We would not have any jobs, because no one could do business. Where do you think the money goes? I have a house and food on the table. That is where the money goes. If the rich man who I work for decided to close the doors because doing business was not cost effective, then I would not have a house or food on the table.

Many large companies don't pay any net tax at all. Goldman Sachs pays 1%.

Originally posted by Darth Jello
Many large companies don't pay any net tax at all. Goldman Sachs pays 1%.

I know that the company I work for pays millions of $ in taxes every year, and that is just to the US. I am all for a flat tax. But just because a company takes advantage of the laws that were written so they could take advantage, does not mean they are evil. The law makes did this on purpose. The reason was to support the work place, were most people make the money that runs the economy.

Originally posted by Ushgarak
Pretty much everything you posted- othern than being exceptionally disturbing "obey the rich or we all suffer" gibberish- is utterly irrelevant. That you don't agree about something so blatantly and straightforwardly wrong is not relevant either- it just makes a fool of you. Shutting down abusive practice does NOT impoverish the working man. On the contrary, it benefits him, as the money as the public's in the first place.

I do not believe I am having to explain this. Taxation money should go towards the public good, not inflating the profit margins of a company via an insurance workaround.

You have it 180 degrees out of wack.

These laws were not made for any reason of the kind- they are being abused, hence the decades long legal battle about the issue.

Luckily, shaky trying to argue this is spectacularly irrelevant. This has long been recognised as an abuse, which is why it is always trying to be closed down.

My reason for not beigng as alarmist as DJ is that I simply don't think it happens on a significant scale any more, and in any case you do at least now have to inform an employee if you are taking out insurance on him now, and he has to agree to it, which is an improvement. I also understand- though I have no knowledge of the details- that the abuse that Michael Moore pointed out had in fact already stopped by the time he made the film.

Still, I'd rather Moore's alarmism than shaky's ridiculous position of "companies can do whatever they like to take money out of our pockets because they deserve it and otherwise they might not pay us".

Originally posted by Shakyamunison
You have it 180 degrees out of wack.

You saying that changes nothing. You are simply in the wrong here.

Originally posted by Ushgarak
You saying that changes nothing. You are simply in the wrong here.

That is your opinion. You have not changes my mind.

Most people don't push the point, like you are doing. All you are doing is just saying I am wrong. I have every right to voice my opinion, and you can think I'm wrong all you like. It makes no difference to me. Please, let us leave it there.

Lord no. As I say, your opinion is so completely out of alignment owith public opinion, legal opinion and common sense that it is deserving of as much mockey and attack as possilbe. It is an absurd, deeply flawed, socially irresponsible and, in the end, unintelligent opinion. And your justification for such activity is utterly ridiculous.

Say that what DJ says isn;t true, if you can find flaws in it. But trying to claim that it is entirely ok for companies to indulge in an insurance fiddle to simply steal money from the taxpayer? Trying to claim that it is ok for laws designed to allow companies to soften the blow of losing a skilled worker to INSTEAD be used simply as an additional profit source at the taxpayer's expense? These are positions that, when supported, deserve nothing but mockery.

Like I say, it is so self-evident that such activity is wrong that I cannot believe anyone would be weird enough to debate it. The wrongness of it is beyond reasonable question. The question is whether it actually goes on.

Actually, it hasn't stopped. Wal-Mart backed out and some states require notification to employees upon hire, not much help when signing an agreement is a condition of hiring. As I pointed out, the last statistics I've seen show that it's a $9 billion a year industry and it's nothing new, going back to the 50's and getting worse and more corrupt through the deregulation of the 80's.

Oh and Shakey, for the millions your company pays in taxes, by how much is that offset by subsidies and write-offs?

Originally posted by Ushgarak
Lord no. As I say, your opinion is so completely out of alignment owith public opinion, legal opinion and common sense that it is deserving of as much mockey and attack as possilbe. It is an absurd, deeply flawed, socially irresponsible and, in the end, unintelligent opinion. And your justification for such activity is utterly ridiculous.

Are you personally attacking me now?