This brings up an interesting thing I thought about, and I don't know if it was by design or just a side effect. It used to be that people's retirement was bas

This brings up an interesting thing I thought about, and I don't know if it was by design or just a side effect. It used to be that people's retirement was based on Social Security and a company pension plan. But now pensions have gone away, Social Security won't pay enough for most people, and we have 401K plans that encourage long-term stock market investments. Now I've always felt that increases in the stock market don't actually reflect a better economy (it may be a lagging indicator -- more people healthily employed == more consumer spending). But a lot of the higher stock prices could be related more to B2B health, not B2C, or due to things like low interest rates, etc. So the effect of 401K is that regular people care more about the stock market than they normally would, therefore vote for politicians that support business-friendly policies even if that is against the overall interest of the voter. And it also happens that people closer to or in retirement care more about the stock market than younger voters, and older people tend to vote more. So is this the main master plan behind 401K, or is it just an interesting side effect?