https://doctorow.medium.com/against-cozy-catastrophies-7ac0a62f0922
"In 1978, Jimmy Carter’s IRS created the 401(k) retirement program. Prior to
this, most Americans had two ways to enjoy a dignified retirement: Social
Security, and employer-provided defined-benefits pensions, which guaranteed you
a proportion of your final salary every month from your retirement until your
death.
The 401(k) was a third way to plan for retirement: you could gamble in the
stock-market, and hope that you weren’t the sucker at the table. At first, this
was a great deal: between the tax-breaks for 401(k) bets and generous
employer-matching funds, many workers and unions were convinced to trade their
sure-thing defined-benefits pensions for market-based alternatives.
We know how that turned out. The vast majority of American workers have almost
nothing saved for their retirements. There’s a reason for that: wages have
stagnated since the Carter era, leaving workers with little-to-no excess cash
to invest in their 401(k)s.
Even if you’re lucky enough to have saved something, that’s no guarantee. Most
of us are woefully unqualified to make bets on the stock market. Even if your
bets pay off, the deregulation of markets has produced wild, calamitous crashes
that offer a stark choice to savers: eviction and hunger, or cashing in
retirement savings and paying ruinous penalties."
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
