$1:
Just goes to show that businesses are not social programs. They do not ever exist for the purpose of providing employees with life-time incomes and benefits.
The facts of the global economy are ending the notion of a union job with lifetime income and benefits
Once again you miss the mark. It's one thing for a company to say it won't offer a pension to employees, it's quite another thing for a company to promise you a pension after a long career, and then when you retire, they tell you to fuck off. It's no different than if you were hired to do a job for $20 an hour then after doing the work, payday comes and the employer says "we're only going to pay you $5 an hour".
In North America, as with most western countries, retirement income is based on the "three-legged stool" principle:
- Government benefits (Social Security/CPP/OAS)
- Personal Savings (RRSP)
- Employer penison/savings (RRSP or Pension/401k)
Claming that employer-sponsored plans are a "social program" is not unlike saying paying employees a salary or wage is a "social program". It's meant to be part of the core compensaiton - you get paid x dollars in cash, plus y dollars in retirement funds. Some how the neo-cons have convinced the world that retirement funds are somehow a "gold-plated perk"
$1:
I can see this being replaced with a retirement account that follows a person from place to place regardless of their employer.
The US has 401ks and canada has DC Pension and RRSP's, but most employers require you to open an account with their providers and financial institutions. It's just too difficult for an employer of any size to track and make contributions to all these different financial institutions. For example, how would they be able to confirm that the non-taxed retirement contribution is being deposited in an eligible retirement account and not simply a normal personal bank account? Company may have liability there if the employee takes a tax hit.
Also, all the research shows that RRSP/401k/DC Pensions fail because the general public isn't sophisticated enough to manage their investments....there's a reason why investment consultants are high-priced and company spend big bucks to hire them for their pension plans. If anyone could do it, these high priced consultants wouldn't exist. Not only that, but personal savings accounts charge extremely high fees, which they take out of your investment returns. They charge individuals several times what they charge an employer. So if your investments actually earned a 5% return, your account will only reflect a return of 4% for example. Similarly if it lost 4% your account would show that it lost 5%. That money addes up over your career - saving just 1 per cent on investment fees could save you $400,000 over 25 years.
$1:
The only problem with this is keeping the greedy mitts of government off of these accounts. Statists hate the idea of money that they can't use to buy votes.
Governments don't have 'their mitts' on any private pension plan accounts.