You DO understand that before 1974, employees had the option of a corporate CASH contribution OR a corporate pension contribution, right?
The 401k was -bigly lobbied for by bigly paid bank lobbyists- created by financial "institutions" for the benefit of financial "institutions". Despite what your financial "adivsor" might have told you, those banks didn't ruin a perfectly good thing and make it worse by creating the 401k out of the goodness of their hearts. Those financial "institutions" didn't -and don't- care about people, except as sources of more income for the financial "institutions".
401k's created lots and lots of fees from lots and lots of individuals - mostly not very well-informed individuals, most of whom had no idea that those fees even existed. Those fees created billions of dollars of revenues for financial "institutions". And, what's an individual to do, go toe-to-toe with a bank in a court of law? Nope. Individuals hang alone; for all their rugged individuality, they are inherently weak and ineffectual against well-organized, well-funded adversaries. (If you airline scrows didn't have your airline unions -that many of you still pychologically insist on despising, despise despite all the benefits you derive- you might understand what I'm talking about here.)
Pensions made few, if any, fees for financial "institutions". Pensions were administered by professional money managers who knew better than to get screwed by other financial "professionals" (read: bank marketing VPs). Pensions represented Billions of dollars. They had market power because they aggregated otherwise powerless small personal amounts of money into huge FUNDS of money managed by actual, trained, professional money managers.
Did you miss the central message of "Wall Street" regarding that movie's antagonist (Gekko [lizard])?? Gordon "purchased" his corporate acquisition targets by using those target companies' own pension funds to fund his purchase of those companies. Then he, like all finance filth, manliness consultants ever since, gave us little people the same BS message we've gotten ever since: "Oh, see, now YOU have CHOICE! Choice, "as an individual", "to use your individuality", and to use your AR to go up against a trillion dollar finance machine?!? Really?? If you think that is true, you have been taken in not by a con-man, but by a con-industry.
If you don't believe me, ask yourself one question: When was the last time financial "institutions" did anything altruistically for the benefit of the poor scrows like you and me?
But, the plan worked! People now think that pensions were "just fixed income" (as opposed to say, an annuity???) People now think that the completely unecessary and aggregious fees charged by 401k "providers" are just a natural, required state of nature... kind of like gravity. Without those parasite fees, we'd ALL be much richer, and a few Billionaires would still be Billionaires with a few fewer billions.
Hint: they are NOT. 401k fees were a creation of banks seeking more money from uninformed chumps like us. All the while buttering us up and making us feel like MANLY, RUGGED, INDIVIDUALS by telling just how smart, and independent, and lucky we are to have our 'Murican choices! Choices unavailable to those other poor scrows who live in places like Canada and the more enlightened European nations who always have ENOUGH! And that's PLENTY!
Jeebus! Looks like we're so far down this psy-ops marketing mis-info road that the current generation once again has NO IDEA how screwed they are... 'cause their parents were also screwed, didn't get it, and never taught their kids. That, and, "Lighten up, Francis, I've got a football game to watch".
You might be smart. But how many people walk into Vegas actually understanding stats and odds and actually knowing just what the hell they are walking into? Doesn't matter... almost ALL those chumps FEEL REAL GOOD!! Go, 'Murica!!! Lots of care and love for each other!!!
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