I know in the years that I was earning into a deferred benefit plan, I barely gave it a passing thought. And, had you asked me if I would prefer cash or for the equivalent to be funneled into some opaque benefits system that would hopefully pay out someday, I'm pretty sure what I would have chosen.
Are some people better with defined benefits? Almost certainly. But at some point you're being pretty paternalistic to say you should much less must take that option.
And coincidentally, wealth inequality is unrivaled in modern times.
Again, you seem to be assuming that there was some special pool of money that went into defined benefits that got pulled back. Which isn't true. Companies pay what they need to hire including benefits packages.
In the former, you are promised (defined) how much you will get in your retirement, in the latter, you are promised how much will be contributed to your retirement savings (but not how much you will get).
> The nitpick about how much the manager shows how much you've been fooled.
I do not know what this is referring to.
>Elsewhere, a pension is a government guaranteed faucet of money for retirement.
The US has that too, called social security.
This was me, letting my opinions get the better of me.
Having to optimize the fees on your 401k is the fiscally responsible thing to do, under the system as it exists, but the fact that social security isn't enough to properly live off of is horseshit.
Hence the tightening of DB pension funding and investment rules (PPA 2006), culminating in non taxpayer funded DB pensions being untenable expensive.
401k funds are as guaranteed as any defined benefit pension. They both get invested into SP500 index funds, and they both get bailed out just the same by the federal government. If the stock market tanks, the DB pension is going down just like any 401k.
