zlacker

The traditional way pensions were handled in the US was directly by the company and paid from company coffers. In those days, the goal of any company was to stay in business long term. One of the ways that was accomplished was by making a lifetime career with the company as attractive as possible through generous pensions.

In modern times, retirement is pretty much exclusively through private investment accounts (401k and similar) into which your company may directly deposit funds. Nowadays it'd be a crazy risk to pin your retirement 100% on a single company. The company could fail, raid the pension fund, or just decide to not pay anymore. All those things happened and that's why we use private investment accounts now.

There are still some traditional pension plans, notably the US postal service. But they're very rare now.

>>mystif+(OP)
most companies converted from pensions to self-directed plans because the cost of any benefit is essentially free compared to a defined benefit pension plan.