Teresa Ghilarducci has been a Cassandra for the decline of Defined Benefit Plans and her new book advocates for government expanding Social Security through Guarnateed Retirement Accounts since the private sector is not doing the job of providing secure benefits for older workers. However statistics and anecdotes do not drive home that sad tale as much as the experience of small plan acturies (like me) in designing retirement plans.
23 Mar
Burypensions Blog 
Posted by Orin Brustad on March 23, 2024 at 3:17 pm
My experience as a pension lawyer working with plan actuaries was that the actuaries were under great pressure to meet owner or CFO objectives. This meant keeping costs down and providing opportunities for high-paid employees to shelter more of their own income from taxation. This was even worse in the public and multi-employer sector where unions (and their members) wanted higher current pay without regard to how the pension costs were increased by the higher pay and where venal and short-sighted executives and public officials “gave in” because they didn’t expect to be around when the plans turned up underfunded.