[lotsofpulp]

There is almost no value to paying someone else to manage your retirement funds when you can do the same thing they do for 0.03% to 0.08% expense ratios with a target date retirement fund from vanguard/Schwab/fidelity or mix and match the various broad market stock/bond funds.

[ghaff]

There often seems to be an implicit assumption that the money funding defined benefit contributions came from a magic money tree somewhere (or at least did so until it turned out that the tree wasn't producing enough).

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.

[unethical_ban]

There was a time where it was expected, and then it was taken away. Now, we are all slaves to the broader market with no guarantees, where once we had guarantees.

And coincidentally, wealth inequality is unrivaled in modern times.

[ghaff]

Nothing is keeping you from putting some portion of your salary into long-term low-risk bonds or even into annuities of various types. Your total compensation is presumably the same (given tax effects) so you're basically saying that you'd rather an employer handle some portion of your savings for you than handling it yourself. And there have certainly been defined-benefit failures and reductions of various kinds so there were pretty much never any guarantees.

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.

[fragmede]

A 401k is not a pension! The nitpick about how much the manager shows how much you've been fooled. Elsewhere, a pension is a government guaranteed faucet of money for retirement.

[lotsofpulp]

Depends on the locality. In the UK, they refer to something similar to 401k as a pension also. The long form would be “defined benefit pension” or “defined contribution pension”.

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.

[fragmede]

> The nitpick about how much the manager shows how much you've been fooled.

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.

[unethical_ban]

Except back then pensions were tied to the company you worked for, and were guaranteed. 401k funds are not guaranteed.

[lotsofpulp]

Assuming the company existed, and was not corrupt in handling all that money. But there is a lot of volatility in a company existing for 50+ years in the future, and there is a lot of corruption.

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.