Word: systemics
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...exception is Occidental Petroleum. In 1983 the energy and chemicals giant, then No. 14 on the Fortune 500, became the first large company to toss its pension and switch to a defined-contribution 401(k)-type system. That was at least a decade before most other large companies made a similar switch, which makes the experience of Oxy Pete and its employees an ideal window...
...contributions came out of your pay but were not taxed, and you had control of them. Contributions could be added or suspended. Best of all, when you left your company, your 401(k) traveled with you, removing a penalty for switching jobs that had been built into the pension system. On the corporate end, a change in accounting rules made the growing cost of pensions more apparent to shareholders. Cutting the pension was a guaranteed way to improve the bottom line. The rise of the 401(k) began...
...guaranteed accounts don't have to be run by the government. The ERISA Industry Committee (ERIC), a group that represents the nation's largest employers, has proposed a system of exchanges that would allow individuals the ability to buy a guaranteed retirement account on their own. Some government regulation would be needed, but it would be a private plan...
...dispense with their 401(k)s? Corporations, for one, are not the least bit interested in taking on pensions again - the cost would be enormous, and the expense makes them less competitive globally. "There are people in the Obama Administration who are supportive of some kind of guaranteed system," says Dean Baker of the Center for Economic and Policy Research. "People should not have to shoulder the risk of a bad turn in the market...
...Nonetheless, a government-run system is not in the cards. "I think there is broad political support for the government administering some sort of retirement plan," says Christian Weller, a senior fellow at the liberal-leaning Center for American Progress. "But even if health-care reform is passed, the debate over the public option has made a similar solution for retirement less likely...