[jerf]

"in the current climate"

One of the reasons I'm not a big fan of pensions is precisely that it's not "in the current climate", but a persistent problem over the span of decades. Many of the bills that are now compounding to an unignorable size are trainwrecks decades in the making. It isn't just that they were mismanaged today; they were mismanaged in the 200xs, and the 1990s (much harder to see because the stock market was doing really well up until it wasn't), and the 1980s... it's not hard to think that maybe the fact they worked at all was simply another historical accident of the bizarre just-after-WW2 period, rather than any sort of good idea. We seem to lack angels virtuous enough to be honest about the numbers and to resist dipping into the Honkin' Big Pile o' Money.

[mathiasben]

I'm convinced it's the changes in the tax laws at the root cause of this. When income over $400k/yr (5 mil in todays money) was taxed at 90% there wasn't the incentive to screw over retirees. The "bizarre just-after-WW2 period" wasn't some fluke it was the result of purposely crafted policies.