anotherlife
Gold Member
You know, looks like it is coming around full circle. The smart asses that everyone idolizes for privatizing pensions, starting with Reagan, have succeeded in eliminating and killing off pension as such. It is then only the 19th century Bissmarck, the founding father of all pensions, who was right. He said that pensions must be an annuity that is undersigned by only the single ultimate undersigner of the land. So now, when bank secrecy has been just traded for blind national loan guarantees, this leads us back to the idea of state pension or national pension, as the only viable system. Still tough though, because nations and states don't have the financial base and age statistics any more to restart themselves.
I am not and would not be in favor of a Government Pension system. That's why I won't take any money from SS or Medicare.
The last guy standing is the government. And you hold the bag. Every annuity assumes a wide portfolio relative to the statistics of its beneficiaries. If you eliminate this difference, by inventing a generally available 401k/IRA, you end up with the same pyramid scheme as government pensions ended up in when their beneficiary statistics approached their worker age statistics.