I will have to work as well into my seventies and perhaps longer, at least on a part-time basis. I am pretty much resigned to it.
Private sector employment has sucked for a long, long time because of federal policies that enabled companies to ditch their pensions and put in worthless 401(k)s.
The notion of pensions - and the idea that companies should set aside money for retirees - didn’t last long. They really caught on in the mid-20th century, but today, except among government employers, the traditional pension now seems destined to be an artifact of U.S. labor history.
The first ones offered by a private company were those handed out by American Express, back when it was stagecoach delivery service. That was in 1875. The idea didn’t exactly spread like wildfire, but under union pressure in the middle of the last century, many companies adopted a plan. By the 1980s, the trend had profoundly reshaped retirement for Americans, with a large majority of full-time workers at medium and large companies getting traditional pension coverage, according to Bureau of Labor Statistics data.
Then corporate America changed: Union membership waned. Executive boards, under pressure from financial raiders, focused more intently on maximizing stock prices. And Americans lived longer, making a pension much more expensive to provide.
The average life expectancy in 1950 was 68, meaning that a pension had to pay out only three years past the typical retirement age of 65. Today, average life expectancy is about 79, meaning that the same plan would have to pay out 13 years past typical retirement age.
Exactly what led corporate America away from pensions is a matter of debate among scholars, but there is little question that they seem destined for extinction, at least in the private sector.
It was federal policy, steeped in libertarian bullshit, that started it.
It has been a race to the bottom ever since.
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