📦 The Retirement Heist:
How We Traded Stability for Speculation.
Before the 401(k), most workers relied on defined benefit pensions which were employer-funded plans that guaranteed a monthly paycheck in retirement based on salary and years of service.
🧮 How Did This Work?
A person could retire with a guaranteed monthly check for life, often equal to 50–70% of their final salary ($2,000 to $3,500/month, depending on salary and years worked).
For example:
Someone earning $60,000 a year with 30 years of service could retire with $2,400/month for life, health benefits included.
The payout didn’t change with the market. It was built on stability. You didn’t have to gamble your future on the stock market, and the risk stayed with the employer.
It was a promise: work hard, retire with dignity.
🎭 The Long Con
This changed in the 1980s when companies started replacing pensions with 401(k) plans (originally a tax loophole for executives). Employers realized they could shift the burden onto workers, offering "choice" instead of security.
Now your retirement depends on whether you invested right, whether the market cooperates, and whether you even earned enough to contribute in the first place.
The 401(k) didn’t upgrade retirement. It privatized it. It cut costs for corporations while exposing millions to risk, volatility, and underfunded futures.
People aged 65+ now have a median 401(k) balance of $113,000. At a 4% annual withdrawal rate, that’s $375/month AND it’s gone in 25–30 years, assuming no emergencies or market crashes.
No lifetime guarantee. No health benefits. No cost-of-living adjustment.
And no backup if you outlive your account.
📉 Systemic Downgrade
So instead of a pension backed by your employer, you now get a market-bound savings account built for Wall Street, not for you.
It’s not just a worse deal. It’s a systemic downgrade.
Corporations saved billions.
Retirees got volatility, uncertainty, and less than one-sixth the income.
TOW
They didn’t just phase out pensions. They transferred the risk onto the worker, rebranded it as freedom and called the collapse your fault.
A pension was a promise. A 401(k) is a bet. And the house always wins.
You don’t get guaranteed income anymore. You get a number on a screen that shrinks when the market dips and vanishes if you live too long. That’s not retirement
That’s roulette.
ETHER
Once, you worked and they owed you a future.
Now, you work and owe the future everything.
They replaced the contract with a question.
They gave you choice where you needed certainty.
They handed you a rope and called it a ladder.
There was a time the promise stood:
Dignity, after labor. Rest, after years.
Now?
They sell you volatility in a vest and call it independence.
This wasn’t reform. It was the long heist.
You don’t retire into peace.
You retire into the market and the market has no memory.
🕳️ Tow the line. Archive the theft.
#10 Economic Obfuscation
#5 Administrative Overhauls