If by "We had the rug pulled" you mean "the people we intended to force to pay for our pensions said 'no thanks'" then I agree.
I get why you may be upset how it played out because I agree that spending all your money your whole life then forcing other people to pay for your retirement is a sweet deal. But as one of the people who was expected to be paying, I'm sure you'll understand why I'm not particularly sympathetic.
But you've fallen hook, line and sinker for the story purposefully seeded by the wealth class (the real wealth class, not the 6-figure salary FAANG 'wealth') to cause the middle class to go to war with each other instead of waging war against their real common enemy.
So well done, hope you enjoy being bent over by the wealth class your whole life because that's what is in store for you.
They guaranteed above-market returns based off of the same ever-increasing-pool math that screwed up social security. Why do you think they’re essentially nonexistent now?
Pensions are nonexistent now because other compensation packages have become the norm. Actuarial regulation has changed to incorporate lessons learned from pension fund failures. The goal of the regulatory changes is to decrease risk to consumers in contemporary actuarial products.
That’s about as deep as I can go on this topic. I’m not an actuary, by a number of my friends are and actuaries talk about lessons learned from failed pensions like engineers talk about lessons learned from failed software development projects. Evidently, demonstrating knowledge of those failures and the resulting controls is a key element of earning the title of professional actuary.
The main difference between car loans and pensions is the time horizon. It’s much simpler to manage the risk of a 3-5 year loan than a 30+ year retirement that begins 45 years in the future.