One wonders about the actuarial assumptions made by your uncle’s former employer and how, or if, they expected to meet that obligation.
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The financial planning is the same, the difference is just in who takes responsibility.
The bottom line is that many people had this as a benefit and now very few do. What's unchanged is most people spend less time thinking about their pension throughout their lifespan than they do about almost anything else you can imagine, but they really should be because it's all on their shoulders now.
Here in the UK it seems we have a whole generation a couple of decades away from retirement poverty.
What's changed is that declining population growth and eventual reversal makes defined benefit pensions impossible to service.
If history is any indication the answer to both of those were "they were wrong" and "caused severe financial issues to the company, if it didn't bankrupt them entirely"
Exactly, the point of the comment being that generous defined benefit pension schemes probably aren’t some paneceal solution that capital is now withholding, but that they were at best a burden and at worst a lie.
How are individuals supposed to have it any easier, though? Should people just be forced to work until they drop? Or does everybody now need to be some kind of financial genius in order to make retirement work?
Tax the zillionaires, pay the individuals more, and the executives less. "Robber baron" used to be an insult and a sign of disapproval. It was a popular term.
In much of the western world, people set aside ~10% of their paycheck to a pension fund, which then invests it in relatively solid options (stocks, real estate, bonds, with a risk profile that adjusts over time as the worker ages).
If you do that throughout a career - keeping the same fund between employers - you have an independent source of income for retirement. By giving significant tax benefits to not withdrawing this money early, most people who worked most of their careers will be set for retirement.
Here in the UK:
> After a lifetime of saving, the average UK pension pot stands at £61,897. With current annuity rates, this would buy you an average retirement income of only around £3,000 extra per year from 67, which added to the maximum State Pension, makes just over £12,000 a year, just enough for a basic retirement lifestyle.
Source[0]. £12K is $16K USD/yr
There are also some sobering statistics on PensionBee[1]
[0] https://www.telegraph.co.uk/financial-services/pensions-advi...
[1] https://www.pensionbee.com/next-generation-of-retirees-repor...