Are Our Pensions Controlled By GATT?

[M]

I don't know if this is real or made up. Who wants to research it fully and comment on it?

This comment from conservative treehouse blew my mind. And nobody in media ever said a word about it. 

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I agree with you that we have to be careful about being dismissed as conspiracy nuts. But there are ways of imparting such knowledge with concrete facts. But as Alex points out here, if it is true of Trump, going into great detail has the tendency to make peoples’ eyes gloss over and get lost. 

I am going to offer something to the forum something I found a long time ago, that admittedly I do not have all the facts about. But I do have a theory as the little glimpse I had really opened my eyes and knocked me for a loop. 

For many years I worked at a top private human resources consulting firm. My speciality was in Defined Benefit plans, commonly referred to as pension plans. I worked on the testing of a platform that was essentially record keeping in order to administer the plan. The firm also worked on Defined Contribution Plans (401k) and Health and Group Benefit Plans. Most of our clients were Fortune 100 companies. 

As we were working on what we called a Calc Engine, in order to calculate a workers benefit, I ran across a factor that had to be used that was called the GATT Rate. I asked my boss what the heck the GATT rate was. This was in 2001 and I was working to install a Cash Balance Plan for Siemens. 

I remember asking as though I was making a joke, “is this tied to the GATT Treaty better known as General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade?”. The answer I receive was in the affirmative. 

This shocked me because it was then that I realized that part of this GATT agreement actually went to the level of determining the Total Compensation of an American worker. Since it is self-evident that an employer always tries to get the most out of a worker while having to compensate him as little as possible, it is obvious that this factor was to limit, or at least equalize pension payments, across the globe. 

That is all I know. I also worked on making sure the plan was compliant with PBGC regulations and ERISA, but I did not write the rules, nor did I know the reasoning behind them. I was just working within the law and making certain the plan complied with regulations. 

How many American workers realize that their compensation is limited by a treaty known as GATT? I would venture to say it is close to none. 

Who knows how Health and Group Benefit plans are affected? Might Obamacare also be subject to various trade treaties? I do not know. But based on that glimpse I received, I have no doubt it does. 

You know that benefits are often referred to as Health and Welfare. There is nothing inherently wrong in a system in which your hospitalization and financial security is earned through your labor. But, at the same time, it is evident that Transnational, or Global Companies are limiting it in order to regulate what a man can make based on what a man might make on the other side of the world. 

This, in my opinion, is High Level Socialism. A type of Socialism that is completely hidden from the average Joe. 

Why does this bother me? It is my contention that a man is only truly free if he can negotiate his salary for as much as he is actually worth and perhaps take on the responsibility for buying his own health insurance and providing for his own retirement. But I also understand the power of buying in to a group plan and the leverage that creates in keeping costs down. For instance, I would much rather have a cheap Indemnity Health plan with a high deductible for hospitalizations and pay cash each time I visit a doctor for a routine visit or for a minor problem. 

But when the web gets so complicated and government and big business have their hand in everything, costs go up as people go to the doctor every time a child sneezes, etc. You get the picture. Or covering what I consider insignificant out of pocket expenses such as birth control or even elective drugs such as Viagara. 

I don’t mean to make this so complex. And I admit I am somewhat extrapolating here and theorizing. But suffice it to say, the GATT rate was real. And it did determine a man’s benefit no matter what form of payment he took at retirement time. 

This is Globalization at the most personal level I can think of. It exists, and as I said before, no one knows it.

 

Here's what Jack Keel responded to this on another venue;

Here's what Jack Keel responded to me on this

It's real and it bites every employee when they retire with a corporate pension plan. If a corporation goes under and those plans get shifted to PBGC and your compensation is limited by GATT, that $1 in pension yesterday might be re rated to anything lesser than $1. Even 10% or nothing. Most employers don't want to hire new employees because of the benefits nightmare and prefer using existing in house employees or subcontractors. Most plans are based on the 40 hour workweek and any hours worked beyond 40 hours are paid as overtime and unless specified they don't count toward a pension benefit because the pay period is specified and the clock starts over.  

Five  24 hour days constitutes a single 120 hour pay period of which you are allowed 40 hours of straight time pay.  Once you get to that 80 hour level productivity drops and accidents happen.

In house labor costs like overtime pay do not get accrued to the benefits base pay and don't count towards your pension plan, the employer knows this and so does the older employee but the carrot is the overtime that entices the younger employee to bite that carrot.

[Virginia Foulk]

Interesting - I wasn't privy to the benefits controls, but I did know about GAAP. Generally Accepted Accounting Principals.  We had to make sure all controls and benefit processes had to be done under this regulation/control. I wasn't involved in the actual data gathering, but did work within handling claims, advertising, refunds and such for Oscar Mayer customers.

I also handled the monthly period close and year end books balancing.