<instructions>Your goal is to analyze the following comment and estimate how highly it will be upvoted by the Hacker News community.</instructions><comment><author>turc1656</author><text>The one thing that made them &amp;quot;make sense&amp;quot; to most people was that the average person is&amp;#x2F;was terrible at personal finance and retirement planning.  The company running the pension was a way for the average person to be &amp;quot;guaranteed&amp;quot; a retirement income without having to worry about anything.&lt;p&gt;Remember, corporate pensions were a big thing when the US was at it&amp;#x27;s greatest economic strength (post-WW2) and the internet with all of its modern tools to make investing much simpler for the average person didn&amp;#x27;t exist.  You had to pay brokers for every single trade or someone else to advise you or you had to just buy and hold a small set of stocks for 30 years and hope those companies would still be around (a fair bet at that time).&lt;p&gt;Back then companies didn&amp;#x27;t really go under like this.  If anything, they got bought by a larger company and merged, but the frequency of that was nothing like today.&lt;p&gt;Today, with health care costs what they are, having pensions and defined benefit plans are insane to me.  It&amp;#x27;s much better for the company to say &amp;quot;we will match x% in a 401k&amp;quot;.  They are defining their contribution and it has a cap.  If anything happens to the company, the employee&amp;#x27;s funds are safe as the money is already transferred.  For the employee, it does require them to manage this money but that&amp;#x27;s far easier and cheaper today and that money doesn&amp;#x27;t require the company to be around forever.  If things tank, the employee is protected.</text><parent_chain><item><author>Waterluvian</author><text>I discovered the concept of pensions managed by corporations when Sears Canada went under and a ton of people lost their pensions.  I guess it&amp;#x27;s a pretty common thing. But it seems absolutely insane to me.&lt;p&gt;Who in their right mind, given any choice on the matter, would want to lock their retirement into the existence and health of a corporation?&lt;p&gt;Until I saw the Sears debacle occur, I thought everyone basically puts together RRSP (Canadian retirement tax havens, I think 401k?) accounts and rely on their required payments into the Canada Pension Plan.  It&amp;#x27;s much less likely that the government or a bank will fail, and the bank, unlike Sears, is CDIC backed.&lt;p&gt;I guess my question is: why do we allow companies to manage retirement funds?</text></item></parent_chain></comment><story><title>McClatchy files bankruptcy</title><url>https://www.mcclatchydc.com/news/nation-world/national/article240139933.html</url></story>
<instructions>Your goal is to analyze the following comment and estimate how highly it will be upvoted by the Hacker News community.</instructions><comment><author>roywiggins</author><text>This risk is supposedly managed in the US by the Patient Benefit Garanty Corporation, but it may itself need a federal bail-out...&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.m.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;Pension_Benefit_Guaranty_Corporation&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.m.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;Pension_Benefit_Guaranty_Cor...&lt;/a&gt;</text><parent_chain><item><author>Waterluvian</author><text>I discovered the concept of pensions managed by corporations when Sears Canada went under and a ton of people lost their pensions.  I guess it&amp;#x27;s a pretty common thing. But it seems absolutely insane to me.&lt;p&gt;Who in their right mind, given any choice on the matter, would want to lock their retirement into the existence and health of a corporation?&lt;p&gt;Until I saw the Sears debacle occur, I thought everyone basically puts together RRSP (Canadian retirement tax havens, I think 401k?) accounts and rely on their required payments into the Canada Pension Plan.  It&amp;#x27;s much less likely that the government or a bank will fail, and the bank, unlike Sears, is CDIC backed.&lt;p&gt;I guess my question is: why do we allow companies to manage retirement funds?</text></item></parent_chain></comment><story><title>McClatchy files bankruptcy</title><url>https://www.mcclatchydc.com/news/nation-world/national/article240139933.html</url></story>