Just within my working life pensions disappeared. Options disappeared, replaced with the rsu. And company health benefits seemed to decline every year, while getting more expensive. And this was before the advent of AI, which already is putting people out of jobs.

Pensions weren't ever economically sustainable for any company especially as life expectancies improved. Having past employees on your books as enduring liabilities (in an asset class sense) isn't good business.

RSUs are functionally equivalent to options. I've had both, and I'd rather have the shares. Tax treatment and shareholder impact of options was also dodgy at best: you were diluting the stock without actually recording that you were diluting the stock. RSUs make companies have cleaner accounting for employee share disbursements.

Medical plans. Welp, you guys wanted Obamacare. Guess what? Employer-based plans got WORSE thank to the ACA's 'Cadillac Tax'.

People don't understand AI's impact on jobs fully. Ford thought they could fire all their engine engineers and replace them with AI. That didn't work out for them and now they're hiring them back.

There needs to be some better nationwide access for plans, true. Supporters of nationalizing health care think that the current system is the best we can do and represents "the free market" but it's nowhere close.