, Columnist
What You Don't Know About Your Defined-Benefit Plan
Defined-benefit pension plans have always depended on unrealistic expectations.
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In the comments section on my recent post on Detroit's pension woes, longtime reader Bronxcobra asks: Why couldn't we just have had companies buy their pensions from insurance companies?
You can, after all, pay an insurance company to sell you a deferred annuity. When we were reforming busted pensions in the 1970s, why didn't we just mandate that companies and governments do this, rather than construct their own pension funds?