From The New York Times: The real reason the investor class hates pensions
EDITOR'S NOTE: Thanks to Suann Hely of West Kentucky Community and Technical College for sending us this.
By DAVID WEBBER
No issue in America today better illustrates the divergent interests of working Americans and the 1 percent than pension reform. Substantial empirical evidence shows that America’s favored retirement vehicle — the 401(k), recently renounced by its own inventors — is grossly inadequate and will leave tens of millions of Americans with insufficient retirement assets. And yet states and cities are busy converting traditional pensions into these failing 401(k)s or equivalents, to the great benefit of money managers and the finance class.
Advocates of pension “reform” — which really means cutting or eliminating traditional pension funds — will tell you that such funds are a big drain on state and local budgets, since, as defined-benefit programs, they are obligated to pay workers a defined amount in their retirement. But that’s largely a question of political priorities; underfunded pensions are the result of, well, decades of underfunding pensions. The real reason for the attack on pensions goes deeper, and exposes the great and growing rift between America’s economic elite and everyone else.
Consider how we 401(k) holders behave as investors. How many of us thought to sue Wells Fargo after the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau revealed that the bank had created millions of fake credit card and bank accounts? Or to push our fund managers to do so for us? How many of us call up our fund managers after a quarter, a year or a decade in which we underperformed the Standard & Poor’s 500-stock index to renegotiate our fees? Or even to switch managers? How many of us even know how our funds performed relative to the S.&P. 500?