401Ks, in general, are a terrible substitute for pensions and social security. The GOP wanted to push Americans’ retirement funds into the stock market, and they did that with 401Ks.

I ran some basic analysis a few weeks ago, and even with the corporate matching on 401Ks, due to the poor fund investment options available in most 401Ks, they underperformed index funds over a 30 year period.

Yes, that means many people who contributed to their 401K at full amount, even with matching, have less money than someone who just invested in SPY or VOO over the same period.

Yeah, but now the upper and middle classes future are dependent on stonks go up. Who would have guessed that all it took to disrupt class solidarity between the lower and middle class was just a little gambling?

This depends greatly on circumstances. In many cases a 401k will be worth significantly more than the equivalent pension (in my father’s case, his pension buyout was worth double ten years later), and there’s no risk of bankruptcy rendering your 401k insolvent. Likewise, many jobs which would have never come with a pension have 401k matching these days.

The downside is obviously that it rides the stock market, but you can make the argument that this actually makes the collective global economy our pension. It’s gives more people a stake in that stability and growth, for better or worse.

It’s just the cycle. Dems get the economy healthy, then a republican comes in and trashes everything and leaves a mess for the next dem in office to fix.

The policy changes always take some time to fuck things up, so it usually happens after the republican gets ousted.

The active president doesn’t really have as much control over the economy as people think, Trump’s tariffs are still in place and wholly supported by Biden as well to the chagrin of the WTO. People’s perception of the economy absolutely changes with the active president, to the point that people will feel more financially secure the day after the president they support wins the election and isn’t even sworn in to office yet. The overarching neoliberal capitalist economy is consented to by both major parties and is “right” leaning if we’re talking pure economic political spectrum. Democrats just believe in more tax incentives and inclusion, Republicans are more ruthless. I guess the main point I’m making is the “Trump” or “Biden” economy isn’t real, what they effectively have are dials that fine tune secondary parameters of the economy.

World events out of their control or financial sector behaviors (like mortgage-backed securities and collateralized debt obligations) are the “real” drivers and the government under either party is generally reactive. Biden is basically doing “good” things under this system that don’t upset it but have small noticeable improvements. So while it’s good to point this out it’s also important to realize these aren’t unprecedented or majorly new things and likely won’t alter our default economic arrangement and social contract, which is still being degraded as the neoliberal capitalist system degrades.

Economists and everyone else ALWAYS keep crying about a recession.

Funny, the “fuck your feelings” pro-Trump crowd seems to perceive the state of the economy based entirely on their feelings.

Edited to add

They like to claim the low unemployment is somehow a bad thing. If you dig into why, it’s basically because when employees are harder to replace, they’re harder to exploit, so working conditions and wages improve while shareholder profits slightly decrease, and they focus entirely on the latter.

please look into how the unemployment rate is a false indicator as well. Unemployment numbers only show those who are actively looking for work, not those that have given up on a broken system. The Unemployment rate does not represent the true number of unemployed in our country. And please stop assuming that because people state a fact that looks bad on your party, that they are automatically for the opposite party. I said nothing about republicans. Them using the stock market as an indicator is just as bad. The truth is that the government has lost touch with the american public. if you want a TRUE representation of how good the economy is doing, look at discretionary spending (disregarding things like tobacco, drugs, alcohol and porn. people always make room for their vices) in the regular joe. look at how far $100 will get you at a grocery store. look at the amount of kids that have school lunch ‘debt’, look at how your local food bank is doing. these are true indicators of how well the country is doing, not what a bunch of out-of-touch, octogenarians on capital hill think. not one those people, both left AND right, have the average american in heart when they do the things they do. They are solely concentrated on getting re-elected, and continuing the will of the oligarchs that line their pockets.

When nine hundred years old you are, not so slay you will look.