Sen. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa), chairman of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, plans to introduce legislation this year to require businesses that don’t offer a pension or 401(k) plan with a company match to automatically enroll workers in a so-called USA Retirement Fund. . . . “The dream of a secure retirement is getting fainter and fainter,” Harkin said Feb. 12 in a speech at the Center for American Progress in Washington, D.C. “Savings rates are low and there’s no simple way for people to convert their savings into a stream of retirement income they can’t outlive.”Wait. Don't we already have a mandatory USA Retirement Fund? I know conservatives say it's flat busted, but it's an article of faith among progressives that conservatives are spouting defeatist nonsense: the Social Security system is fine.
Granted that it's a public policy problem if too many Americans lack retirement funds, is the solution really to keep enacting mandatory government retirement funds, spend the money on something else, discover with shock that people don't have adequate retirement funds, and enact new mandatory government retirement funds?
2 comments:
...there’s no simple way for people to convert their savings into a stream of retirement income they can’t outlive.
He's wrong about this of course, but his blinders are in the way.
I do think the government has a legitimate interest in mandating a level of savings for one's own future retirement (as opposed to paying for a stranger's current retirement--that strikes me as somewhat anti-family). With that mandatory savings level, though, the funds must be the saver's to handle as he sees fit: it's a privatized retirement savings program.
There will, of course, still be failures, but those failures will be heavily limited in scope and well within the reach of the Federal government as last resort to address.
The blinders center on the innate distrust of guys like Harkin in the common man's ability to see to his own welfare.
Eric Hines
...is the solution really to keep enacting mandatory government retirement funds, spend the money on something else, discover with shock that people don't have adequate retirement funds, and enact new mandatory government retirement funds?
Yes!
Sorry, was there a question there, or did you just want a hallelujah? :)
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