DB schemes are a disaster. They encourage people to sit in bad jobs until they hit some magic number of years service + age requirement.
And they only work for people that retire from that job.
I have 3 years of government pension from my first university job in the 90s. But it is based on my tiny post doc salary their at the time. Having the same money in an RRSP all these years would have been much more valuable than knowing I will recieve 1/60 of that $24,000 salary in 20 years time.
I disagree - DB schemes are the only ones that make sense. If statistically, an actuarially sound DB system can assume that everyone dies at 78, a 100% private system would have everyone assuming that they live to at least 90. That is an additional 12 years of income for every single recipient. Considering that the average age of death will still be 78, half of that 12-year surplus will make its way back to government by way of taxes. The result? On average, everybody has to work longer and the only winner is government which collects more tax revenue.
Then there is the benefit of not having to learn about investing. While a competent Mustachian can likely get a good return, how many hundreds, if not thousands, of hours did you invest over the years to become good at it and learn what to do? Let's face it, it's not like one can google "best investment strategy" and get the universal truth. The government employees I know spent that time knitting or playing Dungeons & Dragons, which sounds like a lot more fun than reading about investment returns, MERs, diversification, P/E ratios, etc.