Are 'Dead Peasant' Life Insurance Policies Fair?

This one is mentioned in Michael Moore's new movie "Capitalism: A Love Story." Apparently , the idea is that corporations essentially bet on your employees lives by taking out tax-deductible life insurance policies on them (often unbeknownst to the employee). When the peasant dies early, the employer collects. Jackpot.

Incidentally, this is not to be confused with Death Bonds, where banks:



Guess that's the banks' way of saying "Thanks for the trillions, suckers."

You know...this isn't exactly an issue for me. If a company provides reasonable health care services, yet also takes out a life insurance policy on said worker, why not?

I'll toss out an example. Let's say General Motors puts a $250,000 insurance policy for every factory worker in one of their plants. They provide reasonable health care, and they do abide by safety considerations. So let's say, one of their workers is killed in an accident, what then? They cover some of the expenses from 1) Losing a trained, skilled worker, and 2) Replacing said worker, and possibly/probably covering some of the money they'll need to pay the family in whatever settlement that is created.

People make this sound like they give their workers shitty conditions/benefits just to make money off of them. I'm sure my father is insured for a shitload for his work in South America by his company, because it'll cost a shitload to lose somebody with his experience. They do say it started with insuring executives, no?

Edit: Maybe I'm missing something. I mean, they should of canceled the music store cashier's policy, but meh. Is this about the tax deduction?

I haven't seen it yet. I just heard about the dead peasant thing at the pub. Kind of blew my mind. I like capitalism, but it has to be contained and controlled.

Or it will eat itself.

Companies profiting when their employees die young--what could possibly be wrong with that? In one case (Walmart), the employee worked 48 hours in three days prior to having a massive heart attack. Walmart worked him to death and then collected $300K on his life insurance policy. Nothing wrong with that at all.

The only good thing about it is that maybe it will wake people up to the fact that the corporate elites have crashed the global economic system, then raped the national treasuries so they got their money back while the middle class suffers, and now they're betting that the workers of the world will die young.

At some point people are going to say "Waitaminnit--this is baloney."

So Walmart forced a guy to work his entire work week in three days? How was this done? Did they actually threaten him with termination if he said "Not today *insert manager's name here* I'm too tired, maybe *insert coworker here* could be available"?



Save the soapbox. The government had just as much involvement with the crash, and of course, gave those companies their saving grace. Oh...but let's ignore that, because corporations are evil, and must be overthrown to...something or other. Have factory communes or something.

Walmart has repeatedly faced accusations, lawsuits and what-have-you regarding the working conditions of its employees. Walmart has been sued several times (and settled out of court) for forcing to employees to work off the clock.

So you have a company that has been repeatedly in trouble for its poor working conditions taking out life insurance and cashing in when these poor dummies keel over in Aisle 34. And you don't see anything wrong with that?




Oh I've no doubt the government was in on it. They are all bought and paid for, aren't they? And the politicians will do just fine--they'll take care of themselves, no doubt about that.

The suckers are the one whose taxes are paying to bail out the banks so that AIG can continue to fork over obscene bonuses to their executives while they watch their houses get foreclosed.

as for your final comment, it's what's known as a false dichotomy. It's not a choice of unfettered capitalism or dictatorial communism. There's lots of happy ground in between.

I guess I'll wait for the video. My favourite part of his movies are when he sends props to Canada. I don't like it when he makes the poor security guards and other dogsbodies look like idiots just 'cause they're doing their jobs.

All interesting and such...except you didn't answer my question. How exactly did Walmart force him to work 48 hours in three days? Was it something like..."If you don't do it, we'll fire you!" type thing, which I'd totally disagree with and hopefully the relatives sue Walmart, or was it "Hey, a shitload of people are calling in sick, can you cover for overtime?" Which might have been stupid on the manager's part, that's for sure, but doesn't seem to have intent to kill him, especially since I don't think the manager called State Farm for the insurance policy.

I don't know anything about the case. Instead of being rude about it, tell me it. Don't toss out statements/facts/opinions/whatever that does not have to do with what I addressed.





What final comment? My only comment is that you're going on about stuff I really couldn't care about. I just told you to save the soapbox, and the government was more than happy to A) Go along with it, B) Help create it, and C) Help fuck it over.

All I wanted was information on this WalMart case, and how the guy was "worked to death" after working 48 hours in three days. And I thought there can be reasonable reasons why companies might have insurance policies on their workers, be it accidents, explosions, killer employee, Godzilla, whatever. Maybe I'm just a bit idealist or whatever, but I don't think companies or individuals insure their properties, only to destroy them for the money, even if there are cases of people doing that.

The rest was sarcasm.

These policies are legal and may or may not be fair but if the widow in this instance wanted money when her spouse died, "They" should have taken out a policy.

I know for a fact that in Canada. for years parents took out insurance policies on their children and then cashed them in when the child turned 18 and the policy matured. I'm also pretty sure that most of the kids never saw one red cent of that money, if they we're even told about the policies.

So since these parents weren't big corporations the question now becomes we're these parental "Dead Peasant" Life Insurance Policies anymore fair than an employer looking out for his company?