401Ks are a disaster: Column

[Egalitarian Thug]

85. Another aspect, universally ignored by the proponents of this long-con, is the percentage

of people that lose everything when they are unfortunate enough to have bad timing. To reach retirement age during a bad time, or to fall ill after 40, etc.

Last week the DJIA passed 14,000 (and then fell again) and DU was subjected to a blizzard of "Good news! I've finally made it back" threads. What few wrote, or even noticed, was the hundreds of thousands that lost everything, including their 401 (k), trying to keep body and soul together. They didn't recover anything because they had nothing with which to build up again.

Every recession, market correction, downturn, whatever you want to call it, yields these results to a minority that accumulates with each cycle. These people are lost forever, discarded like so much refuse never to be considered again. Is this really a system that is working well? One which you endorse because because you're alright?