Pension fund worries

Wendy McElroy discusses some of the implications of the United Airlines pension fund scam:

The advice offered by the CNN commentator was sound: don't expect your pension to be there for you when you retire; find new ways to save right now — e.g. instead of sending your children through university, encourage them to take out a loan; downsize — e.g. move to a less expensive house; learn how to budget and budget tightly; consider innovative steps like a reverse mortage. As I said, her advice was sound but I had a strong urge to bitch-slap her smiling face as she chatted brightly about people just "having to move into a smaller house, that's all." Where were those sage words from legions of financial talking-heads who have insisted for years that "gee whiz, the economy is great!" Big Business is your friend. And pay no attention to the man behind the curtain.

I've joked for quite some time about the risks of depending on your government pension ever being there for you to collect it, and the biggest businesses are now much more like the government than like "real" companies. Any time they find themselves in trouble, they can either get the courts to bail them out, or the government will ease their troubles with a regulatory crowbar or six. The pernicious notion that any private entity is "too big to fail" must be stomped out: without the risk of failure, there is little need to pay any attention to market conditions or customer requests (making them, once again, more like the DMV than HMV).