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Comment by dragonwriter | Hacker News Reader

> Defined benefit pensions are also largely a product of a more paternalistic time when there was an implicit deal of spend your career (or at least a big chunk of it) working for us and we'll help take care of you in retirement.

There's no reason you can't have portable DB pensions (you'd need standards for employers set by the plan, and a common DB plan, but in a way that's how many non-federal public DB plans already work—they serve multiple different public sector employers.)

Its a policy choice not to do that in a way which provides universally portable plans covering private as well as public sector employers.

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At that point, why not just increase the level of social security? It sounds like you're mostly creating an additional universal system to layer on top. And, if it's not universal (including small businesses that now have an additional administrative cost) you have now created a retirement plan that basically favors public sector and big companies (which admittedly 401k already does to an extent).

> At that point, why not just increase the level of social security?

I was mostly thinking in the context of state governments in creating their existing multi-employer DB plans making that policy choice, but, yes, the Feds could also expand SS contribution and benefits to make it a universal first-line pension instead of a near-universal safety net pension.

Multiemployer DB pension plans are a specific thing unrelated to taxpayer funded DB pension plans.

An examples would be multi employer Teamsters truck driver pension plans, and they are notable because in a multi employer DB pension plan, when an employer goes bankrupt, the unfunded liabilities get distributed amongst the remaining employers. Which means once things start going downward, the longer you stay in, the more of the bag you are left holding.

Which precipitated the recent bailout of some multi employer pension plans, since they had enough political sway:

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/07/business/dealbook/bailout...

Will only work assuming population and economy will continue to grow in the future. While this has always been the case in the USA, it is not always the case globally.

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