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...IF YOU WORK OR WORKED FOR THEM
Life insurance policies which pay out to an employer in the event of an employee’s death.
Michael Moore’s latest film, “Capitalism: A Love Story,” has reinvigorated discussion of “dead peasant policies,” as Jonathan Kim explained on The Huffington Post:
One of the more explosive revelations in “Capitalism” is “dead peasant” insurance policies (also known as “janitors” policies).
This is when a company buys a life insurance policy on a rank-and-file, low-level employee – usually without the employee’s knowledge – and claims the company as the beneficiary should the employee die.
The company retains the policy even after the employee leaves, and if the employee dies, the company receives a large, tax-free payout, which they then refuse to share with the family of the deceased.
Dead peasant policies were spotlighted in February 2009, when the widow of a Texas bank worker sued her husband’s former employer after it received a $1.6 million life-insurance payout following his death.
(In May 2009, Ellen E. Shultz reported in The Wall Street Journal that many banks use payouts from employee life insurance policies to help pay bonuses to current employees.)
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Michael Moore says he made his latest documentary, "Capitalism: A Love Story," as though it were his last. And it might be.
The George W. Bush antagonist of "Fahrenheit 9/11" and gun-control champion of "Bowling for Columbine" closing up shop? The General Motors jouster of "Roger & Me" and health-care trouper of "Sicko" no longer in the documentary business?
Filmmaker Michael Moore says his most recent film, "Capitalism: A Love Story," might be his last documentary.
Moore says he may return to doing fictional films.
"I'm saying it's a possibility, yeah," Moore said in an interview at the Toronto International Film Festival, where "Capitalism" played in advance of its nationwide rollout Friday.
"I've done this for 20 years. I started out by warning people about General Motors, and my whole career has been trying to say the emperor has no clothes here, and we better do something about it," Moore said. "I've been having to sort of knock my head against the wall here for 20 years saying these things.”
"Two years ago, I tried to get the health-care debate going, and it did eventually, and now where are we? We may not even have it. What am I supposed to do at a certain point?"
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