Is Social Security considered a pension needing cuts because these poor people have nothing without it. I get the State, my friend makes $476,000 a year and will get 80 percent for life. He quit his dental practice after the 2000 crash and never wanted to worry about retirement again. He's now got his 20, he's working on the Parole Board and State Hospital too spike his pension. You think doctors deserve full pay after working with prison and mentally ill shit heads?
Think out of the box. You say pensions are a state issue in America. It is easy to solve, develop a new pension product that is made available nationally that offers advantages to other pension schemes then manage how the scheme is paid into and how the funds are managed. A new product can enable pension saving economic control along with many other benefits. New product development and additional functions or superior pensions saving is the way to do it.
Easier said than done. The USA is political dysfunction to the nth degree. We can't even offer private health care insurance plans across state lines. We operate as 50 separate countries in many respects.
But what if there was a new pension product developed that could offer everyone advantages that they did not have before. The methods of paying into the account and how the funds are managed could be altered to control the economy. Is the 401K form of pension not a national thing? You could offer a new type of scheme that can be managed to control the economy.
It's called the US federal government. Money in, money out. There are some pervasive misunderstandings about the US budget. Eleven percent of the US annual budget is spent on Defense. The vast majority of annual US mandatory government spending is for entitlements. There are some Countries with Sovereign Wealth Funds - notably China, Norway, and several Middle-Eastern oil producing Countries. Results are quite mixed and it doesn't really manage or control the economy as you suggest. China owns entire Companies that either dominate or outright monopolize industry sectors. In a democracy that approach would be problematic. Most Countries that have State owned Companies have moved to privatize them because they work more efficiently that way.
Pension saving changes make more or less income available to consume with also pension fund investment can speed up or slow down the velocity of transactions. In the United Kingdom this process has proven very effective enabling the economic targets to be achieved and making massive treasury cost efficiencies. A new pension product like the 401K would be able to manage both pension saving rates and the investment of pension funds. This can be used to control economic growth, inflation, interest rates. See below. http://morganisteconomics.blogspot.com/p/success.html http://morganisteconomics.blogspot.com/2020/04/pension-saving-as-economic-control-tool.html