>And heaven forbid you should be so well off that you have to save for retirement with after-tax dollars and/or in taxable accounts! Well, this is where the di

>And heaven forbid you should be so well off that you have to save for retirement with after-tax dollars and/or in taxable accounts! Well, this is where the distortion comes in. The employer uses pre-tax money when funding pensions. The employee doesn't have the ability to do this. It's the same situation with other benefits. So it's optimal to take a lower salary and more benefits. But this is strictly worse than if the taxation regime was the same for both employees and employers.