My point is basically that at minimum 50% of the taxes foregone to support the 401k system[SEE EDIT] is going to people who definitely would have had an awesome

My point is basically that at minimum 50% of the taxes foregone to support the 401k system[SEE EDIT] is going to people who definitely would have had an awesome—not just OK, not good, awesome—retirement no matter what. Not the poor or middle class. Functionally no-one in the middle class is getting five figures of contributed funds per year from their employer, let alone the ~$36k it'd take to max it out. Who are? Top-end professionals who can be self-employed in such a fashion that they own their "employer" (and again, LLC or partnership won't cut it, because reasons) and very well compensated corporate folks (chiefly management-tier). Plus family of rich people who're just (legally, but clearly via Some Real Bullshit) dodging taxes. [EDIT] OK so 50% is not necessarily right, obvious, I realized as soon as I posted, but the benefits are very disproportionately in the favor of people who aren't exactly the ones one might hope a government-supported retirement system would be mainly designed to help, and the best possible benefits aren't practically available at all to middle-class people even if they do somehow manage to put the actual total contribution limit away for retirement (they'll lose out on probably at least half the max benefit of the system, since they can only put ~$19k or $20k in tax-free themselves and probably only get low-thousands contribution from their employer at best, so the rest is getting taxed before being invested, and IIRC you can't even stack an IRA on top of a maxed-out 401k contribution)