> You can argue that people aren't putting enough money in their IRA or 401(k)s to retire, but that's not "hugely underfunded", that's short-sightedness or cir

> You can argue that people aren't putting enough money in their IRA or 401(k)s to retire, but that's not "hugely underfunded", that's short-sightedness or circumstance. The end result is the same: most people don't have enough money to live comfortably on in retirement. That's what I mean by shifting blame. Sure, it's not the government's fault you don't have a healthy retirement account, they didn't rob your pension fund, you were just "shortsighted". There's no mystery here, we've known since the institution of Social Security that almost nobody saves enough money for retirement if left to their own devices. Shifting to (nominally) employee-controlled defined-contribution plans just means we have only ourselves to blame for what will be the same societal problem: impoverished retirees. And the problem will be just as hard to solve, because it will be seen as an issue of people failing to be responsible, so why should we bail them out?