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I still don't understand why a person's pension is in any way related to their place of employment.
The US fucked this up during WWII when it froze wages to prevent businesses from swiping employees from each other. So instead of wages employers started offering benefits instead, two of the commonly offered benefits were Pensions and Medical Insurance.
As a nation we really should fix these problems but doing so would be hella expensive and perhaps even impossible as we're hitting the same demographic off-ramp that France and so many other Western Nations are already on.
You and me both, I much prefer the 401K model.
401ks are still related to the person's place of employment, so they don't actually solve that problem. I'd rather see us ditch them in favor of higher contribution limits to IRAs.
Defined-contribution retirement plans (401ks and IRAs) in general are not an adequate replacement for defined-benefit ones (pensions and Social Security) because, frankly, people are too stupid on average to plan properly for their future. And even if you think stupid people deserve what they get, it's still a problem that affects you because of the collective burden massive numbers of indigent elderly would put on society.
401ks never should've been created, and the replacement for private employer pensions should've been an expansion of Social Security.
(I say all this as someone with much larger than average retirement savings who's aiming for FIRE, by the way. This is a critique of the system from someone who has benefited from it, not sour grapes from a stereotypical poor millennial.)
Don't understand, could you elaborate? FIRE?
"Financial Independence; Retire Early." See also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FIRE_movement
TL;DR: I keep my household expenses very low (roughly $30k/year) and save a very high percentage of my income so that I can retire very early. The pandemic changed my plans a bit, but I'm expecting to be done by age 45. (By the way, to address a common criticism of the idea: "retire"means doing whatever I want without being beholden to working for a wage, not necessarily vegging out in front of the TV and stagnating as certain workaholics assume. The important distinction is that I could choose to work if I wanted, but wouldn't need to.)
401ks are a time bomb waiting to go off. If / when there's another severe stock market crash (and make no mistake one is coming) tens of millions of retirees are suddenly going to be penniless.
If a crash of that magnitude happens it's not like social security would fare any better. At that point you're talking about full scale economic disaster that affects the entire world.
It doesn't require a full scale Great Depression style meltdown, the 'downturn' of 2008 caused significant difficult for many, it simply requires a sharp enough retraction of Investment Capital. That retraction is already in progress as the retirement rate for Boomers escalates and more of them begin selling their stocks and bonds; either directly or through their retirement instruments like 401ks and Pensions.
I'm not a doomer but I am fairly convinced that 401ks are a timebomb.