Welfare For Wall Street: Fees On Retirement Accounts

[Yupster]

7. Defined benefit plans are better for the employees (in general)

but they don't make much sense for the employers.

GM sends out some ridiculous amount of checks each month to employees who are retired, sometimes 40 years ago. They have thousands of problem checks each month due to deaths, divorces or simply changed addresses.

A company may have to radically downsize. Sending checks out each month to people you don't even know just doesn't make sense.

Better to have a 401k. When the employee leaves you shake their hand and transfer their 401k into an IRA and you're done with them.
Sadly pretty much the only places which still have defined benefit plans are governmental agencies like school districts where they don't have stockholders to answer to.