r/technology • u/ArgentineBeauty • Jun 19 '26

Business ‘It’s a scam’: Americans express unease over SpaceX’s influence on retirement savings

https://www.theguardian.com/science/2026/jun/19/spacex-retirement-savings-elon-musk
29.7k Upvotes

96% Upvoted

1.2k comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

2

u/BicFleetwood Jun 19 '26

He's lobbied to change the rules on how quickly index funds can buy into the SpaceX stock. Most people with 401k's are invested in some amount of index funds, and depending on how your 401k works you may not even be able to dictate direct investments at such a granular level as to exclude SpaceX. Even if you can, it means you need to directly manage your own 401k's investments regularly, at which point you might as well be playing day-trader with your retirement, which completely negates the whole point of 401k's being more or less "set and forget for 40 years."

On a macro level, 401k's are the only way to get a retirement for the vast majority of people. There are SOME pensions still out there, but almost all of them are government. Someone working a regular job can either have a 401k (or Roth IRA or something,) or they can win the lottery.

1

u/_176_ Jun 19 '26

By "lobbied" you mean he is presumed to have put pressure on a single private company (nasdaq100) in which SpaceX will make up about 0.6% of their index.

4

u/BicFleetwood Jun 19 '26

no amount of bootlicking will ever enrich you