Stock market

The stock market has soared more than 75 percent in the past five years, yet many pension funds, where many middle-class workers should benefit from the market’s rise, continue to struggle, jeopardizing benefits for the workers who were counting on them in retirement.

This week, amid the hullabaloo over President Barack Obama's Deficit Dinner Diplomacy, and Sen. Rand Paul's 13-hour filibuster-cum-dissertation on drone strikes and civil liberties, financial news-watchers touted a milestone in their lives of Market Worship. We speak, of course, of the Dow Jones Industrial Average, which on Tuesday hit an "all-time high" of 14,253.77.

Fewer Ohio businesses are offering defined-benefit pension plans, as employers attempt to reduce future funding obligations and shift retirement liabilities to workers.

John Greene worked for 30 years at an Oscar Mayer plant in Madison, Wis., deboning hams and loading boxes of hot dogs. His plan grew to $60,000, and soon after retiring he began withdrawing $3,600 a year from it, money that allowed him and his wife to take what he called a wondrous two-week trip to Scotland, his ancestral homeland.