I feel like recent history has shows that pension plans plans are a disaster for companies b/c you're just offsetting costs into the unknown future when you may not be able to afford it. (see american car companies and unionized labor)
It also seems to attracts complacent people ie. lifers (see gov't sector)
Though there are irritating artificial tax benefits, I always would rather get cold hard cash
On the plus side, your future pension is not dependent on the success of your employer, a much larger crisis (as in Greece now) is required before your retirement is in danger.
On the minus side, it's dependent on the success and long-term planning of the country, and any kind of early retirement may be impossible/harshly penalized.
Personally I would prefer to handle it on my own, but on the whole I really appreciate that everyone is guaranteed a stable and healthy retirement.
2) Assuming tax collections for Social Security remain at the same level they are today, the trust funds won't run out of money until the year 2034. (See https://www.nasi.org/learn/socialsecurity/future-finances)
So there's a gap between what they're collecting and what they're paying out, but "will be a problem 20 years from now" is quite a bit different from "living paycheck to paycheck." And since the Social Security Administration doesn't have control over either the amount of revenue they get or the amount of benefits they pay out -- those decisions are all made by Congress, not SSA -- it's difficult to argue that any of this is their fault.
Definitely agree with you that SSA is not at fault here.
I'm not seeing the link between defined benefit company-sponsored retirement plans and retraining.