[olladecarne]

Pension funds take money from poor people and give it to rich people, just like everything else. When the economy is doing well, rich people make billions by managing them, and when it's not doing well rich people still make billions until the funds become insolvent. Here's a PBS documentary on the state of pensions in the US: https://youtu.be/_r0htm5uHPQ

[sicp-enjoyer]

Somehow I don't think you're giving the full picture.

[socialismisok]

What's missing from the picture?

[hackerlight]

It's not the full picture only because a handful of pension funds do their job properly, they come up with a sensible diversification and put it into passive instruments.

Everything beyond that is a scam. High fees for what should be a simple task, or taking reckless risks or allocating to active managers, is where the scam part comes in, and most of the industry is guilty of that.

[wyager]

Have you considered that you have the causality flipped, and that people are generally rich because they're good at making money under adverse conditions? Would you expect someone who was capable of accumulating large amounts of wealth to get BTFO by a market downturn?

If pensions have a problem, it's because they were never economically viable, and at this point basically serve as a vehicle to transfer money away from the majority of people and towards retired boomers and government employees.

[freemint]

> Have you considered that you have the causality flipped, and that people are generally rich because they're good at making money under adverse conditions?

They might have. However any look at generational wealth dynamics quickly dispels that idea. Any above market performance rich people have are simply able to have better managers because managing bigger pools pays more and maybe an education which focuses on maintaining and building wealth. This education could be widely available but it is not made widely available. I am not going to imply a conspiracy here or appeal to class interests for explanation and just leave it as a statement of fact.

[mihaaly]

As far as I see those making money (actually value behind it) are not getting rich but those who sit on top of the money flow do. Skimming it.

Also pension funds take over money from young or middle age, yes, but not giving it to anyone else than themselves on the end, when they became old. It is not given to boomers, are you sure you know what pension funds do and how it differs from traditional (social) pensions?

Not given to else eventually, except in the meantime when given into the care of financial professionals to hold it for them to keep its value - for a very generous fee, not for free of course, the fee of the professionals is determined by the professionals themselves - and indirectly to bad politicians to finance the everlasting popularity spending and consequential budget deficit through bonds (or sometimes for a good cause too, like in recent and ongoing turmoiled period in the form of social support, which might still strongly overlap with popularity runs, see current UK government).