9 ms·

Fewer than one in 10 plans offer any kind of alternative investment, according to an American Retirement Association survey. Only 2.4% make private equity avail

Fewer than one in 10 plans offer any kind of alternative investment, according to an American Retirement Association survey. Only 2.4% make private equity available. Just what retirees need. PE and VC vultures don't have access to dumb institutional money anymore, so they're lining up to suck the blood out of tens of millions of little people. They know that there are many who are either ignorant or desperate enough to go all in on crypto, AI, NFTs, inflated "unicorns" or whatever other hot scam that rises up in the future. Bagholders will be retirees who have no recourse when 99% of these schemes fail, while the hyenas laugh all the way to the bank.

OutOfHere 2y ago
Sarcasm is inappropriate for online conversation even when it's obvious to you because it leaves great room for misinterpretation when you least expect it. As an engineer, one must value precise and clear communication.
- delfinom 2y ago
  Yea but the wealthy elite need more bagholders to continue transferring the world's wealth to themselves. And the wealthy elite are now in complete and full control of the US government. This is going to happen guaranteed now.
  - OutOfHere 2y ago
    It's funny because the elite will be accumulating a currency that will keep losing real value very fast to inflation.
    - neilv 2y ago
      Isn't crypto much sketchier than private equity?
      - deleted 2y ago
        [deleted]
      - mandmandam 2y ago
        As a concept? No. In practice? Also no. Crypto scammers take millions, private equity takes hundreds of billions. It hollows out entire industries; kills hundreds and hundreds of thousands of jobs. In PE funded nursing homes the mortality rate is 10% higher. PE owned hospitals raise prices by 20-30% while cutting staff. PE firms pay lower tax rates (carried interest loophole), ie, they steal from everyone. A 2022 ProPublica investigation estimated that tax loopholes exploited by PE cost the U.S. government $180 billion annually in lost tax revenue. 'Dividend recapitalizations' have extracted hundreds of billions from businesses, often leading to their failure. The estimated economic damage from PE is well over a trillion dollars; and I'd say that's extremely lowballed. Crypto might be riddled with scammers from top to bottom, but there is real potential there; and even if there wasn't, it still wouldn't have a patch on private equity as far as "sketchiness".
        neilv 2y ago
        Good points. Would you say this is all PE, or only some?
        mandmandam 2y ago
        I can't speak for all PE. However, even their lauded 'success stories' - Hilton Hotels, AirBnb, Tesla etc - seem to generally turn out pretty evil. How can they not... The whole goal of PE is to extract value from workers and the Earth, and funnel it into the pockets of the .01%. This, in a world where inequality is stifling our potential as a species, and as a planet, on a truly unimaginable scale? Beyond the hype and the rationalizations, fundamentally, the investors always win and society always loses. They've turned our industries into a casino, and they're the house. Sometimes good people win in a casino, and sometimes they even get paid out, but it's a fucking mugs game that preys on our blind spots and is leading us into some very dark places.
    - deleted 2y ago
      [deleted]
      - deleted 2y ago
        [deleted]
- asdffdasy 2y ago
  but sarcasm is fun. like: This will solve the problem with boomers holding all the wealth. yay!
- ronnier 2y ago
  I agree with you. People type out the complete opposite of what they mean, leaving it up to the readers to make sense out of it. This is extremely prevalent on Reddit and has started to bleed into hn a lot more lately (along with politics but its obvious the mods are stamping that out).
  - lostmsu 2y ago
    > leaving it up to the readers to make sense out of it You should always be doing it.
- dogcatrat 2y ago
  [flagged]
- loeg 2y ago
  Only the first sentence is sarcastic. By sentence two it is abundantly obvious what GP meant in sentence one. This comment would be hard to misinterpret.
  - OutOfHere 2y ago
    That is correct, but it's good discipline to just never use it because one can become careless with its application.
mschuster91 2y ago
> Bagholders will be retirees who have no recourse when 99% of these schemes fail, while the hyenas laugh all the way to the bank. And this is why I'm glad enough Germany has a public pension scheme that actually works and not some 401k crap. The last attempt to introduce something stock based here ("Riesterrente") ended up being an utter scam that made people distrust in the stock market ever since - and that's how things should be. Stock markets should be for investors looking to raise investment capital to further the growth of their companies from other professionals, derivatives/futures markets should be heavily restricted (e.g. agricultural futures for a long time used to be reserved in trade for farmers and wholesale-scale buyers - nowadays the majority of trade is being made by speculative free-loaders), and pensions should be backed by the government because chances are higher there is still a government in 40 years than whatever hot tech startup is the utter hots these days.
- spwa4 2y ago
  Wow German has actual money saved in the pension system. Most public pension systems (whether in the EU or US) immediately pay out what is paid in, and are on track for bankruptcy. Which is the flaw in most public systems. There is no way the pension system of the Netherlands will work for people currently younger than about 50. It seems pretty unlikely it will even work until death for people currently entering the system. The actual problem is deeper. You don't care about money in old age. You care about living expenses, housing, and medical care. Most of that is effectively labor. Labor you get to use after you can't work anymore yourself. The money is a means to an end. And that's where just about every pension system fails, public or private. And that labor will definitely not be available in 20 years at the level it is today. Pensions being public or private simply change the method of failure: currency devaluation, raising costs or bankruptcy of the pension system, take your pick. It does not change whether they fail.
  - mschuster91 2y ago
    > And that labor will definitely not be available in 20 years at the level it is today. Pensions being public or private simply change the method of failure: currency devaluation, raising costs or bankruptcy of the pension system, take your pick. It does not change whether they fail. Indeed but a government at least has some sort of accountability and long term thinking built in. The forces of the market are by nature short-term dominated and are accountable to effectively no one (but a few select billionaires).

OutOfHere 2y ago

Sarcasm is inappropriate for online conversation even when it's obvious to you because it leaves great room for misinterpretation when you least expect it. As an engineer, one must value precise and clear communication.

delfinom 2y ago
Yea but the wealthy elite need more bagholders to continue transferring the world's wealth to themselves. And the wealthy elite are now in complete and full control of the US government. This is going to happen guaranteed now.
- OutOfHere 2y ago
  It's funny because the elite will be accumulating a currency that will keep losing real value very fast to inflation.
  - neilv 2y ago
    Isn't crypto much sketchier than private equity?
    - deleted 2y ago
      [deleted]
    - mandmandam 2y ago
      As a concept? No. In practice? Also no. Crypto scammers take millions, private equity takes hundreds of billions. It hollows out entire industries; kills hundreds and hundreds of thousands of jobs. In PE funded nursing homes the mortality rate is 10% higher. PE owned hospitals raise prices by 20-30% while cutting staff. PE firms pay lower tax rates (carried interest loophole), ie, they steal from everyone. A 2022 ProPublica investigation estimated that tax loopholes exploited by PE cost the U.S. government $180 billion annually in lost tax revenue. 'Dividend recapitalizations' have extracted hundreds of billions from businesses, often leading to their failure. The estimated economic damage from PE is well over a trillion dollars; and I'd say that's extremely lowballed. Crypto might be riddled with scammers from top to bottom, but there is real potential there; and even if there wasn't, it still wouldn't have a patch on private equity as far as "sketchiness".
      - neilv 2y ago
        Good points. Would you say this is all PE, or only some?
        mandmandam 2y ago
        I can't speak for all PE. However, even their lauded 'success stories' - Hilton Hotels, AirBnb, Tesla etc - seem to generally turn out pretty evil. How can they not... The whole goal of PE is to extract value from workers and the Earth, and funnel it into the pockets of the .01%. This, in a world where inequality is stifling our potential as a species, and as a planet, on a truly unimaginable scale? Beyond the hype and the rationalizations, fundamentally, the investors always win and society always loses. They've turned our industries into a casino, and they're the house. Sometimes good people win in a casino, and sometimes they even get paid out, but it's a fucking mugs game that preys on our blind spots and is leading us into some very dark places.
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
    - deleted 2y ago
      [deleted]
asdffdasy 2y ago
but sarcasm is fun. like: This will solve the problem with boomers holding all the wealth. yay!
ronnier 2y ago
I agree with you. People type out the complete opposite of what they mean, leaving it up to the readers to make sense out of it. This is extremely prevalent on Reddit and has started to bleed into hn a lot more lately (along with politics but its obvious the mods are stamping that out).
- lostmsu 2y ago
  > leaving it up to the readers to make sense out of it You should always be doing it.
dogcatrat 2y ago
[flagged]
loeg 2y ago
Only the first sentence is sarcastic. By sentence two it is abundantly obvious what GP meant in sentence one. This comment would be hard to misinterpret.
- OutOfHere 2y ago
  That is correct, but it's good discipline to just never use it because one can become careless with its application.

mschuster91 2y ago

> Bagholders will be retirees who have no recourse when 99% of these schemes fail, while the hyenas laugh all the way to the bank. And this is why I'm glad enough Germany has a public pension scheme that actually works and not some 401k crap. The last attempt to introduce something stock based here ("Riesterrente") ended up being an utter scam that made people distrust in the stock market ever since - and that's how things should be. Stock markets should be for investors looking to raise investment capital to further the growth of their companies from other professionals, derivatives/futures markets should be heavily restricted (e.g. agricultural futures for a long time used to be reserved in trade for farmers and wholesale-scale buyers - nowadays the majority of trade is being made by speculative free-loaders), and pensions should be backed by the government because chances are higher there is still a government in 40 years than whatever hot tech startup is the utter hots these days.

spwa4 2y ago
Wow German has actual money saved in the pension system. Most public pension systems (whether in the EU or US) immediately pay out what is paid in, and are on track for bankruptcy. Which is the flaw in most public systems. There is no way the pension system of the Netherlands will work for people currently younger than about 50. It seems pretty unlikely it will even work until death for people currently entering the system. The actual problem is deeper. You don't care about money in old age. You care about living expenses, housing, and medical care. Most of that is effectively labor. Labor you get to use after you can't work anymore yourself. The money is a means to an end. And that's where just about every pension system fails, public or private. And that labor will definitely not be available in 20 years at the level it is today. Pensions being public or private simply change the method of failure: currency devaluation, raising costs or bankruptcy of the pension system, take your pick. It does not change whether they fail.
- mschuster91 2y ago
  > And that labor will definitely not be available in 20 years at the level it is today. Pensions being public or private simply change the method of failure: currency devaluation, raising costs or bankruptcy of the pension system, take your pick. It does not change whether they fail. Indeed but a government at least has some sort of accountability and long term thinking built in. The forces of the market are by nature short-term dominated and are accountable to effectively no one (but a few select billionaires).