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Comment by bo1024 | Hacker News Reader

The idea of the 401k is such an amazing hustle for the wealthy.

* Middle-class Americans consistently pump money into the stock market generically (not information trading), raising the value of all your stocks over time.

* Now you have a gun to their head to support policies that pump up the value of your stocks even more.

* Also, when shit hits the fan, they can't easily cash out, but you can. Both on a mega-scale (recession), and individual stocks (when companies tank, you sell first, and 401k index or diversified funds take a hit).

I'm not an expert in this stuff but it smells from miles away.

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Just a pedantic note - I have most of my 401K money in Certificates of Deposit, so you do not have to pump the market.

However (thanks, Federal Reserve!), you get punished with interest rates below inflation, so people, increasingly desperate to protect their savings from inflation, put their money in risky investments (not just the stock market, also overpriced real-estate, etc).

If you research the history, you discover that the 401k was designed for the C-suite, not ordinary workers. Some calculating Wall Streeter(s) somewhere decided that it's a reasonable retirement vehicle for ordinary shlubs. It is not. See this: https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/article/teresa-ghilarducc...

> The idea of the 401k is such an amazing hustle for the wealthy.

You make a very interesting point!

I wonder what a "reverse 401k" program would look like (e.g. box the wealthy into aligning their actions with the interests poor/middle class while only marginally benefiting themselves).

> aligning their actions with the interests poor/middle class

Any attempt to recognize classes exits will lead to class war. Everyone is upper class, or waiting to join upper class, anytime now.

Class war is good.

Taxes?

I wonder what a "reverse 401k" program would look like (e.g. box the wealthy into aligning their actions with the interests poor/middle class while only marginally benefiting themselves).

Pensions? Those also don't seem to work all that well.

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