Over the past few decades, employees fortunate enough to have employer-based retirement benefits have been shifted from defined benefit plans to defined contribution plans. We are now seeing the results of that grand experiment, and they are frightening. Recent and near-retirees, the first major cohort of the 401(k) era, do not have nearly enough in retirement savings to even come close to maintaining their current lifestyles.
Disheartening, but not surprising.
Love the “retirement is not a right” comment. Retirement is a societal NECESSITY. The point is to get older people out of the workforce and get younger people in. Since we’re living longer than we used to (in spite of many people’s efforts to make healthcare a luxury) more of us are reaching 65 or 67 or whatever the retirement age is. So we can let these people stay in the workforce and keep graduating unemployable kids, or can get them out in a way that doesn’t force them to the Soylent Green factory.
