zlacker

>>rntn+(OP)
I always see the words pensions in civic deficit news. I'm early 30s and pensions are a concept that nobody my age or younger will ever benefit from yet is footing the bill for.

>>kyleho+mc
Are you mad at the pensioners, who worked for decades on the agreement they’d get a pension, or are you mad at the oligarchs and businesses who lobbied to make pensions a thing of the past so that you’re not protected as well?

You should be mad at the Capitalists not the workers.

>>ok_dad+he
Patrick Boyle did a segment recently on pensions that I cannot locate. He pointed out that the private industry in the US that granted generous pensions in the mid-20th century all went bankrupt, and that is why there are not private-sector US pensions anymore. It coincided with globalization, but is more a symptom of the countercyclical nature of pension expenses. They cost most when a business can bear the costs least.

This is one of many ways that folks aged 70+ had it much better than folks in the workforce now, and represents generational inequality that you should not minimize or attribute to "capitalists."

You may, if you like, attribute it to "generosity" by individuals indifferent to "math."

>>unytti+Ig
> They cost most when a business can bear the costs least.

Shouldn't a reasonable business have been investing forward to avoid this problem? IE, you don't use todays dollars, you use yesterdays dollars.

Its seems the flaw is that they lacked sufficient savvy to invest the pensions in a way where it would be able to build upon itself.

>>no_wiz+Lj
It's more-- you build a tidy SaaS business. It's stable for a while. You want to be generous and skilled workers are in demand, so you offer a pension. This is good for a while, maybe a long while, and you "invest forward" as appropriate.

Then, a competitor disrupts your segment. The competitor is new, and for whatever reason does not have the same legacy pension expense. In order to compete, you must invest. But your pension expense in particular does not allow this.

What does the legacy enterprise do in this situation? In many cases in the 20th century, per Patrick, the business lost relevancy and slowly went bankrupt.