That argument has always been bullshit. Payout to retirees from stocks and sovereign debt is functionally just a tax on corporations or a transfer from general revenue, respectively. Since most pension funds are explicitly prohibited from investing in anything other than mature companies (so no private equity or IPOs), and since stock markets don't need pension funds to perform their legitimate functions, there is no overall economic benefit here. Full stop.

In other words, pension privatisation is a zero-sum game (or negative-sum, if you count the time and effort spent on management, and all the other productive assets that are betrayed into hopelessly unproductive works).

- Jake

If you only spend 20 minutes of the rest of your life on economics, go spend them here.