[ghaff]

> Employers are contributing money now, but have pushed any risk onto the employee, making it feel pretty worthless as a retirement strategy.

You seem to be arguing that saving for retirement is futile. You can invest is (almost) arbitrarily low risk to principal investments like US treasuries. I probably wouldn't advise that as the sole investment strategy for most people. But it is one way to reduce certain types of risk. (And most defined benefit plans have the same risk with respect to inflation.)

[sokoloff]

I think all they're arguing is that the word pension =~= "defined benefit retirement plan".