A SIPP is something you setup completely separate to your employment. In fact you don't even need to be employed to open one.

An American 401k is a more like what we'd call a "workplace pension" here in the UK, which nowadays a defined contribution scheme from a third party provider selected by your employer. These vary in fees, fund selection etc, but you usually get additional contributions from your employer, as well as better tax relief, for using it vs a SIPP.

Most employers won't pay monthly contributions from salary in to a SIPP due to the increased payroll costs, although some (mine does) will do so for annual bonuses.

Confusingly there's also something called a "full SIPP", which is a much more expensive less-retaioy SIPP that can be used to invest in things like leveraged commercial property.

> Confusingly there's also something that people call a "full SIPP", which is a much more expensive but less-retaily SIPP that can be used to invest in things like leveraged commercial property.

If REITS are what you're referring to then I'm fairly certain a full SIPP is more analogous to a 401k. You can open a 401k today, on your own, without a business. They're just optimized for pre-tax so it makes sense that they're tied to work. Employer matching varies wildly. There is no predefined contribution that can be made by vendors, I believe the 401k limits are all federally mandated, but that mostly has to do with tax optimization.

Well I would guess some people think that living in society means you are always, as a new generation, building on top of what the previous one did. So it is fair that when they can't work anymore we use part of the surplus of productivity that comes precisely from that long-term investment in productivity made by older generations to help them out.

To think of that as "stealing" seems pretty individualistic and short-sighted to me. What benefits would the current generation have to give future generations a future if everything that matters is how much you save and do in the now? This line of thinking leads to financial decisions that value the present much more than they do the future and it's in big part a reason why we are in deep waters when it comes to climate change.

Of course, I agree that it is important to reward people personally as well. But I think it's much more important that we are building sustainable societies capable of taking care of people all through out their life cycles and that improvements on productivity impact us all because, after all, we all live together. But I guess that's just my personal vision of what a good society should be; for others, as you say, they would rather live in a dog-eat-dog world because they know they would be top dogs.

I doubt grandparent is actually against the principle of paying for the prior generations retirement... provided the next generation pays for ours.

The unfairness comes from the current generation not being afforded the same privilege as the last, now that existing defined benefit schemes are largely closed to new members, and extinct in the private sector. These schemes are typically underfunded and stink of Ponzi.

Meanwhile, the current context in the UK is that the Bank of England has just had to bail out defined benefit pension managers who had overleveraged their assets... no doubt at the taxpayers expense.

It's not really surprising to see people clammer for "fuck you, got mine" when half a generation literally believe they will never own a home and never be able to retire.

Oh yeah, you’re right. In the US we mostly use the term “pension” to refer to the type where you only get benefits after 5 years of service, the employer decides where to invest the money, etc.

Updated my original post to make it a little clearer.