American companies used to guarantee their workers a pension — a monthly check for life after decades of loyal service. It was the backbone of the middle class. Then, quietly and deliberately, they stopped. Today, fewer than 15% of private sector workers have access to a traditional pension. The median American worker has less than $1,000 saved for retirement. So what happened? How did an entire system that sustained millions of families for nearly a century just disappear — and who profited from killing it?
This video traces the full history of the American pension, from Otto von Bismarck’s original system in 1889, through the post-war boom that made pensions standard at every major corporation, to the Studebaker collapse that exposed the system’s fatal flaw. We cover the passage of ERISA in 1974, the accidental invention of the 401(k) by Ted Benna, and the corporate freeze wave of the 2000s that saw IBM, General Motors, Ford, Verizon, and dozens of other giants abandon their pension obligations entirely. We also break down the exposed retirement crisis gripping America today and why the man who invented the 401(k) now calls his own creation “a monster.”
