3 ms·

This view is, forgive me, amazingly wrong. The absence of a pension is a Ponzi scheme, because the only source of funds for people no longer working is that of

This view is, forgive me, amazingly wrong. The absence of a pension is a Ponzi scheme, because the only source of funds for people no longer working is that of people currently working. The "pensions were supposed to" should be reframed- pensions "would have fully taken care of people...." had they been properly defended rather than attacked and dismantled. That pensions still exist, that they have been funded even to 35%, after the unrelenting assault on them by private capital, is an incredible achievement. The equivalent funding level for alternatives to pensions is something like 10%- taking real estate into consideration. Without real estate, the funding level is probably less than 1%. It is a difficult, difficult problem to organize humans to fund the future at scale. Pensions were/are an incredible success, even if that success is partial and insufficient.

turk73 7y ago
I'm 46 and I've never worked anywhere that had a pension plan, so I guess they're not all that successful. I have worked at companies where some employees were in a defined benefit plan, but I always came too late and got in the 401K pool. There is a distinct difference in those two groups of employees: One group were lifers who were fiercely loyal to the company, and the second group, my group, was like WTF ever, we don't care. Then what happened is that the corporation merged with another and they fucked all those pension plan people out of their pensions. So you see? It did them no good to be such assholes to everyone, including to me. In the end, they got nothing (or very little) for their loyalty. Thus endeth that lesson. You can't trust corporations, they stab you in the back. It also happened to my mother at MetLife in the early '90s. MetLife had a pension plan until UnitedHealth took them over and then it got reduced to pennies on the dollar. She still gets like $100 a month from whatever settlement, but it's not what was originally promised, not even close. 20 years of work right there. My Dad has a union pension which he still collects and it is halfway decent owing to the fact that the union went out of its way to run off as many people as they could before they were eligible to retire. It's hazing--they fuck with anyone getting close to retirement age, trying to force them to leave the union. Unfortunately for them, my Dad is an extremely mean SOB and fought them right back, physically, at times. In fact, so few people collected on that pension that the union was legally required to up the payouts. Think about that. My whole take on pensions is that they are bullshit. They promised the world and the unwise were far too trusting and then they all got screwed one way or another and someone else raided that pension fund, banksters of a certain ethnic relation, probably.
ra1n85 7y ago
I don’t know where to begin with this - I guess I’ll say it’s a stretch to say that the ‘only source of funds’ for those not working is certainly not those working, particularly when those not working enjoyed the biggest economic expansion and prosperity in the last several hundred years. And attributing the failure of pensions to meet their obligations to ‘attacks’ and lack of ‘defense’ isn’t a well formed opinion or argument, yet you dole out plenty of shade on others’.
Mary-Jane 7y ago
In simplistic terms a pension relies on the continued growth of the entity that funds it so we can ignore our political biases and just look at the math to test the truthiness of your assertions: an entity with stagnant income simply cannot continue to fund a growing population of retirees. Historically, very few corporations outlive their employees [1], so pensions aren't a good fit for the private sector. Governments rely on growing populations to fund their pensions, and with negative population growth in so many areas of the country these days they seem hard to justify in the public sector too. [1] https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2015/01/what-is-the-life-expectancy-of-your-company/ https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2015/01/what-is-the-life-expe...
- labawi 7y ago
  Couldn't the pension funds be fully funded and solvent without population growth? Assuming lower yields would mean higher contributions levels for similar benefits, or additional funding from say capital taxes, but seems plausible.

turk73 7y ago

I'm 46 and I've never worked anywhere that had a pension plan, so I guess they're not all that successful. I have worked at companies where some employees were in a defined benefit plan, but I always came too late and got in the 401K pool. There is a distinct difference in those two groups of employees: One group were lifers who were fiercely loyal to the company, and the second group, my group, was like WTF ever, we don't care. Then what happened is that the corporation merged with another and they fucked all those pension plan people out of their pensions. So you see? It did them no good to be such assholes to everyone, including to me. In the end, they got nothing (or very little) for their loyalty. Thus endeth that lesson. You can't trust corporations, they stab you in the back. It also happened to my mother at MetLife in the early '90s. MetLife had a pension plan until UnitedHealth took them over and then it got reduced to pennies on the dollar. She still gets like $100 a month from whatever settlement, but it's not what was originally promised, not even close. 20 years of work right there. My Dad has a union pension which he still collects and it is halfway decent owing to the fact that the union went out of its way to run off as many people as they could before they were eligible to retire. It's hazing--they fuck with anyone getting close to retirement age, trying to force them to leave the union. Unfortunately for them, my Dad is an extremely mean SOB and fought them right back, physically, at times. In fact, so few people collected on that pension that the union was legally required to up the payouts. Think about that. My whole take on pensions is that they are bullshit. They promised the world and the unwise were far too trusting and then they all got screwed one way or another and someone else raided that pension fund, banksters of a certain ethnic relation, probably.

ra1n85 7y ago

I don’t know where to begin with this - I guess I’ll say it’s a stretch to say that the ‘only source of funds’ for those not working is certainly not those working, particularly when those not working enjoyed the biggest economic expansion and prosperity in the last several hundred years. And attributing the failure of pensions to meet their obligations to ‘attacks’ and lack of ‘defense’ isn’t a well formed opinion or argument, yet you dole out plenty of shade on others’.

Mary-Jane 7y ago

In simplistic terms a pension relies on the continued growth of the entity that funds it so we can ignore our political biases and just look at the math to test the truthiness of your assertions: an entity with stagnant income simply cannot continue to fund a growing population of retirees. Historically, very few corporations outlive their employees [1], so pensions aren't a good fit for the private sector. Governments rely on growing populations to fund their pensions, and with negative population growth in so many areas of the country these days they seem hard to justify in the public sector too. [1] https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2015/01/what-is-the-life-expectancy-of-your-company/ https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2015/01/what-is-the-life-expe...

labawi 7y ago
Couldn't the pension funds be fully funded and solvent without population growth? Assuming lower yields would mean higher contributions levels for similar benefits, or additional funding from say capital taxes, but seems plausible.