Pensions are one thing, as they are more centrally managed and underfunded anyway, they would likely roll over without a wimper. For 401Ks though, the hint of it would send everyone to the exit and crash the financial system. For that reason, I don’t think they will be directly touched. The tax structure around them may change, and I fully expect in another decade or so if you did save, you will be means tested out of social security, but that is about it.
True. You’d see something like Obama’s 2015 budget proposal to turn tax advantaged accounts for college savings into taxed ones.
Or else they will boil the frog slowly by requiring that 401k administrators invest a mere 10% of the accounts' money in safe investments like government bonds rather than risking people's retirements in the dangerous stock market. Expect that type of argument to be especially powerful if the market drops 20% quickly. And if all the 401k accounts sell off their stocks quickly the warnings of danger of the stock market will be self fulfilling. Then that will be bumped up to 20% or 30% because the 10% requirement was so successful. Pretty soon 90-100% is in bonds with no one but a few "crackpots" screaming and no one shooting anyone.
In the end, many people will stop contributing new money to 401ks because they will get more return in non-retirement accounts even if they have to pay taxes immediately rather than defer them to retirement and many will take their 401k balances as cash with the immediate taxes and 10% (or more later) penalties rather than rolling them over into IRAs or new 401ks.
What makes you think that they won’t crash financial system? One has to destroy a system if one wants to create a new system, targeting a redistribution of wealth. That is exactly what has been done in every Totalitarian system, and could be done by the current regime overnight. Just sayin’-pray that it doesn’t happen..