Can you help with my Freeper Father-in-law?

Last night over dinner FIL was belly-aching about how his pension has taken a dive, his stock is now worth nothing, etc.

I said something along the lines of, "Well, why do you vote against your own self-interest?"

He challenged me to produce a piece of legislation that the Republican party was responsible for that directly affected him.

I told him I was sure there would be one, but I couldn't quote one off the top of my head.

I'm sure there are dozens of things the pukes have done, but I can't think of any specific, and I don't know how to begin looking.

Anybody got a bright idea?

is what limited lawsuits by shareholders and made it easier to fleece pension funds invested in the market.

Clinton vetoed it..repubs overrode the veto

but I tried googling it for more info, but all I seem to get is medical stuff.

I know I'm a :dunce:

I may have gotten the title wrong...either way...unfortunately Dodd and Lieberman were the spearheads of the program and the Repubs went running with it

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/object/article?f=/c/a/2005/07/17/MNG5GDPEK31.DTL&o=0

Tell him I said, "You're welcome."

on tax cuts for the wealthiest and on a needless war.

and that was a puke push

how a "defined benefit pension" has taken a dive. Unless the underlying company went bankrupt and hadn't set aside funds as required, pension plans provide a set benefit regardless of what the stock market does.

so maybe that was a factor?

:shrug:

or stock options

could be changed to his detriment, but that could be done regardless of whether the stock market is going up or down.

he would be if all of his retirement money was in the stock market as proposed by B*s plan to save Social Security.

I don't talk politics with my mother-in-law. It's worked for me.

while the price of everything else doubles.

After all the Republicans have had now over 5 years of absolute power there are no excuses for them not having them done anything that directly benefits the middle class and below.

A pension plan or a defined benefit plan is a plan by which a formula calculates your monthly benefits once you retire. An example would be social security.

You get X dollars a month for the rest of your life.

Stock market returns wouldn't effect that a bit.

The other choice is a defined contribution plan.

In a defined contribution plan, you end up with not a monthly benefit but just a chunk of money invested in whatever choices you've chosen, usually mutual funds.

Defined contribution plans are often hurt or helped by the stock market, although even within these there are usually a couple of choices you could pick that have nothing at all to do with the stock market. The most well known defined contribution plan is probably the 401 (K).

He may be meaning defined contribution plan when he's saying pension.

Be warned that when you ask for help on issues like this that DU is at its worst on economic threads like this one. Many of the responses will have info which is just completely wrong, so caveat emptor.