I am 72. My father worked for one company his entire life. He worked for one company his entire life, from 1931 to 1976. He started sweeping floors and ended as

I am 72. My father worked for one company his entire life. He worked for one company his entire life, from 1931 to 1976. He started sweeping floors and ended as a Senior VP. In 1975 his employer went bankrupt and my dad received 8 cents on the dollar for his pension. Later the Federal Government adopted a federal program insuring private pensions but that was no help for my dad. And employers, responsible for paying into the federal program, dropped private pensions like a hot potato. I never had a pension. Hardly any private companies offered them to my generation. And nobody sat us down and explained 'retirement' and who supports you after you work all your life. Nobody explained it to my dad, who thought he was being provided for. And nobody explained it to 'Boomers' because there wasn't anyone with knowledge to explain 'it' to us. Our parents had pensions. They knew nothing about a world in which there weren't pensions. The perilous and sad fate facing the Boomers in retirement has had the 'benefit' of at least providing us with the knowledge to educate our children about the perils of life. The hard rules are: In the United States, you are solely responsible for what happens to you your entire life. Health care and retirement are both your responsibility. As demonstrated by my father's plight, this has always been true - even if there were lies told to you making you think you had a pension (btw, my father's employer was far from the only one that didn't have the funds to pay its pension benefits). We live in a modern society in a modern world. However, it remains a world of winners and losers. And the losers far outnumber the winners when it comes to parceling out resources once you stop 'working for the man' the majority of your life.