Rant On:
Maybe it's because we're all competing with every other worker in the world. There seems to be extreme pressure being placed on employers to lower salary overhead and focus on minimizing the impact of wages on the bottom line. This not only impacts wages, but also long-term benefits like 401Ks, Pensions and bonuses.
We have all seen the effects on pensions - they are anachronistic and on their way out as an unsustainable method of saving for retirement. I'm not sure if that's completely true, or just is incompatible with modern finance where a huge pile of money is irresistible to institutional investors to raid and invest poorly.
401Ks are quaint, and are a great way to align the worker's success with the success of the really rich in the market. They are a useful tool, but the idea of a million dollar 401K is for some reason considered absurd (remember how Romney was skewered about it?), which is in itself absurd if you need at least three million dollars to RE. I guess if you could retire on a 401K at 59 1/2, your employer would think you're making too much money. 401s are another huge pile of money that is irresistible to institutions and government when the SHTF. During the last financial crash, corporations stopped contributing to 401Ks
first, before changing any executive compensation or modifying their plans. It was clear that employees were "lucky to have their jobs" which is a new experience for American workers - at least since the Depression.
And when was the last time bonuses were a 'thing'? I used to make about 30% of my annual salary in bonuses. It changed a
lot in the past 20 years. That was another thing that disappeared in the financial crisis - except for Wall Streeters.
Sure, some people will save, others won't. It's not like everyone in the past were financial wizards. We have been very fortunate to live during an incredibly prosperous time in our history and seem to think that we're individually entitled to it. The real American Dream was about removing the obstacles to wealth. The fact is that externalities drive the overall investment profile of most people. If there's nowhere to make money, then it's hard to be rich - unless you're born into it. This is why it is so frustrating to hear people who think they are "all that" by getting rich in the U.S. This is the easiest place to become wealthy because our system was designed for it.
If we fail to protect that "secret sauce" of institutional security that is the foundation of our capitalist system, we will certainly risk becoming no better than any other country where people struggle to get by. There is little appetite in D.C. for any kind of safety net because we still seem to believe 'we're better than that', but nobody is protecting the institutions that have made us who we are. Those who run the levers of power are choosing to exploit them instead.
Rant off.