<story><title>The Investor Class Hates Pensions</title><url>https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/05/opinion/investor-class-pensions.html</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>whack</author><text>I feel like the author is mixing together some important differences between 401ks and pensions.&lt;p&gt;------ Pensions:&lt;p&gt;- &amp;quot;Your&amp;quot; money and everyone else&amp;#x27;s money is lumped into a single pool. If previous retirees were given too much money because of poor planning, &amp;quot;your&amp;quot; money will evaporate&lt;p&gt;- Your future benefits are fixed, regardless of market conditions. Unless the pension can&amp;#x27;t afford to do so because of a market crash, and declares bankruptcy. In which case, anyone left holding the bag will be screwed&lt;p&gt;- Zero financial literacy&amp;#x2F;discipline required. Your contributions are pre-determined, and the pension managers will take care of all investment decisions&lt;p&gt;------ 401ks:&lt;p&gt;- Your 401k is 100% yours. There is no risk of your 401k account &amp;quot;going bankrupt&amp;quot; because too much of it was given to others.&lt;p&gt;- Your future benefits are dependent on market conditions - unless you choose to buy an annuity.&lt;p&gt;- Financial literacy and discipline is required. If you don&amp;#x27;t contribute enough, or make bad investment choices, you&amp;#x27;re screwed&lt;p&gt;-----------------&lt;p&gt;The article completely ignores the 1st and 2nd differences, which is why many people like myself are uneasy with pensions. The 3rd point is what the article mostly focuses on, and that&amp;#x27;s a valid point. I&amp;#x27;d love to see &amp;quot;full-service&amp;quot; 401k plans, where employees are forced to contribute at least X% of their income, and all of it is managed by the equivalent of a pension-fund-manager (ideally, invested into low-cost diversified index funds)&lt;p&gt;Too many people lack the financial discipline to make sufficient contributions, and the financial literacy to make good investment decisions. So full-service 401ks as described above, could be a net positive for society, without all the baggage that come with pension funds.</text></comment>
<story><title>The Investor Class Hates Pensions</title><url>https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/05/opinion/investor-class-pensions.html</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>ng12</author><text>&amp;gt; We let ourselves be charged high fees that we do not understand, we accept poor returns quarter after quarter, we never sue to enforce our rights, we never vote as shareholders and we never tell our investment managers how we think they ought to vote.&lt;p&gt;Is this satire? How is a pension better than a 401k in any of these dimensions? If my retirement is invested in overpriced, underperforming funds it&amp;#x27;s 100% my own fault. If my pension is chronically mismanaged (as they tend to be) there is literally nothing I can do about it.</text></comment>