Isnt the stock market where people get their retirement money from? If corporations fail the USA will Fail.
Many Americans have no retirement funding beyond SS. Most of those who do have investments fight like hell to preserve the relatively small principal, take withdrawals reluctantly. The ownership society was extremely damaging to seniors, because it attacked the value of what had been considered relatively safe investments- MBS.
Some people still receive old fashioned pensions, which are market dependent, many of which are in serious trouble. Yeh, current retirees get their money, but fund solvency is becoming increasingly tenuous, resulting in two tier systems where new hires get the bone-o-rama...
When the PBGC is forced to take over, benefits are slashed hugely...
Seniors whose incomes are the most stable, imho, are small time landlords who bought decent rentals decades ago, kept them up, paid them off or nearly so. They're solid cash cows, and I kick myself in the ass for having not done that myself.
Such landlords can offer good deals to desirable tenants, keep them for a very long time by holding rents at the low end of market price. An old friend in my home town is on his second generation of tenants from the same family in a property he owns. When the original couple who lived there when he bought the place got old, needed help, their daughter moved back in to help. When they passed on, she and her brother now rent the place for themselves. They think my friend is the greatest guy in the world, treat the place as their own.