Posted on 03/03/2009 5:35:15 PM PST by Libloather
Rethinking retirement plans for the work force
David Nicklaus
ST. LOUIS POST-DISPATCH
03/03/2009
With our retirement savings system looking a bit frayed around the edges, the search is on for changes that will help workers navigate the vagaries of financial markets.
Should we force people to save more, perhaps by requiring every 401(k) plan to have an automatic-enrollment feature? Should we regulate fees and account offerings more tightly? Or should we junk the 401(k) entirely and replace it with a government-guaranteed savings program?
These ideas and many others have been floated amid a severe bear market that's dimming many Americans' retirement dreams. But before he considers the proposals for mending this fraying system, President Barack Obama first wants to expand the number of people that it covers.
Obama's budget, introduced last week, embraces a concept known as the Automatic Individual Retirement Account. It would require every employer to offer an IRA through payroll deduction, and to automatically enroll all workers unless they specifically opt out. "It's potentially very consequential," says J. Mark Iwry, a Brookings Institution senior fellow and principal of the Retirement Security Project. "It is the first realistic attempt to break the decades-long barriers affecting pension coverage."
He's talking about the fact that roughly half the American work force has always lacked access to a workplace-based retirement plan. That was true in the era when most big companies offered a traditional pension, and it's true now that the 401(k) is the most common retirement vehicle.
(Excerpt) Read more at stltoday.com ...
...it would be the perfect time to privatize Sosha Security.
Obama is a communist can anyone figger it out? I gotta go and take a break for aweek. It will only get “progressivly worse”. Commie in the White House = Disaster.
So, what would happen IF they re-wrote the LAW
(1) so you could work as long as you wanted. Then begin collecting Social InSecurity when you actually did stop working?
(2) So you didn’t HAVE to begin pulling money out of your 401K and IRA at age xyz, but could pull it out when you really, actually wanted to?
(3) Alternate. So you could pull a little out of Social InSecurity at the same age, but could keep working (part-time if you wish) for as long as you wanted to?
Every employer?
Small businesses will simply not hire employees.
Nah, they will compensate by reducing the take-home pay.
The 401k program might actually have been a great benefit to the future economy as the baby boomers retired before eligibility for S.S., Thus freeing up jobs for the next generation. The boomers then become full time consumers, fueling the economy. Ah how quickly our dreams go up in smoke.
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