‘The 401(k) industry owns Congress’: How lawmakers quietly passed a $300 billion windfall to the wealthy

In some ways, they were really ahead of the times.

1917 them

Prepare the poop!

The Supreme Court thinks otherwise as they enjoy luxury gifts and vacations from wealthy donors.

Because it's overcomplicated, the barrier to entry is significant, and we blame its problems on the consumer as "financial literacy". Just over half of workers actually have one, and most of them are mismanaged by third parties lobbying for more complexity.

I’m a software engineer and have had multiple startup employers not provide a 401k. It’s actually much more common than you think to not have one at all. Only 56% of employers have a 401k.

It’s even more common to have no matching. Of the 56% that have a 401k only 50% have any matching at all. This leaves less than 25% of employers with matching.

Of my 3 employers who did not have a 401k they all compensated me in mostly equity. Only a single employer had their equity eventually pay out in some form and it’s not eligible to be put in retirement funds outside of the standard IRA which maxes out significantly less than that 401k

Its just this attitude that allows the 401k middlemen to exploit the market and influence our government. People think it benefits them, but it really benefits other people more.

Have to be able to save money to use a 401k

Because you can hide hundreds of thousands annually in there. No working class individual makes that much. That money should be taxed

Edit: since people seem confused by the lack of clarity, copying my reply from below:

In a 401k? Yes. But if you read the article:

Today, wealthy taxpayers can protect up to $452,500 per year in tax-advantaged accounts in a single year, saving up to $203,600 on their taxes. And they can keep their money in tax-advantaged accounts far longer.

There are many types of tax-advantaged accounts.

https://www.investopedia.com/terms/t/tax-advantaged.asp

I have no idea. You can do about 30k for 401k with catch up contributions and another 8k in ira with catch up. Your employer can put in another 49k maximum. That's not even 100k. Hsa is a backdoor Ira, so there's 8.3k for a family. I guess it's the rule that allows a 529 to become an ira now, depending on the state you can put 200-500k in one, but that's a lifetime limit not annual.

I started looking into it, found cash balance plans that allow very high contributions to tax advantaged retirement accounts. However looks like something that is not available to the vast majority.