Floyd Norris says some sensible things in his column from last week on the retirement savings problem: Defined benefit pensions are dying out, killed by tighter accounting rules and the stock market crashes of the 2000s. Many Americans have no retirement savings plan (other than Social Security). And the plans that they do have tend to be 401(k) plans that impose fees, market risk, and usually a whole host of other risks on participants.
But even his cautious optimism about some new policy proposals is too optimistic. One is the MyRA announced by President Obama a couple of weeks ago. This is basically a government-administered, no-fee Roth IRA that is invested in a basket of Treasury notes and bonds, effectively providing low returns at close to zero risk. The other is a proposal by Senator Tom Harkin to create privately-managed, multi-employer pension plans that employers could opt into. The multi-employer structure would reduce the risk that employees would lose their pension benefits if their employer went bankrupt.
These are steps in the right direction, but modest ones. The underlying problem with private sector defined benefit plans is that the employee takes on counterparty risk, where the employer is the counterparty. In this case, the pension plan is insulated from the risk that a company will fail, which is an improvement, but not from the risk that the plan itself will fail due to a market downturn (of the kind we have recently seen). There is language about allowing the plan to reduce benefits in such a scenario, but this of course undermines the benefit of a defined benefit pension in the first place.
The underlying problem with individual retirement savings vehicles (in addition to all the usual problems like fees, bad investment choices, leakage, etc.) is that many people just don’t make enough money to save for retirement. In this country we like to think of the ability to save as some kind of moral virtue, but in reality it’s primarily a function of your income. There is no comparison between saving 10 percent of a $250,000 annual income and 10 percent of a $15,000 annual income. What’s more, the MyRA caps out at $15,000, after which point you’re on your own in the Wild West of asset management predators firms.
MyRAs could get people in the retirement savings habit, which is useful if they start making upper-middle incomes, but not enough if they are stuck in the lower middle class. At the end of the day, the only way to ensure some degree of decent retirement income for low earners is to have a partially redistributive pension system (or a much higher minimum wage), and the only way to avoid the solvency risks of defined benefit plans is to have a federal government guarantee. (It should be no surprise that Social Security has both.) MyRAs and Harkin’s plan can help at the margins, but they won’t solve those fundamental problems.
Truthout Is Preparing to Meet Trump’s Agenda With Resistance at Every Turn
Dear Truthout Community,
If you feel rage, despondency, confusion and deep fear today, you are not alone. We’re feeling it too. We are heartsick. Facing down Trump’s fascist agenda, we are desperately worried about the most vulnerable people among us, including our loved ones and everyone in the Truthout community, and our minds are racing a million miles a minute to try to map out all that needs to be done.
We must give ourselves space to grieve and feel our fear, feel our rage, and keep in the forefront of our mind the stark truth that millions of real human lives are on the line. And simultaneously, we’ve got to get to work, take stock of our resources, and prepare to throw ourselves full force into the movement.
Journalism is a linchpin of that movement. Even as we are reeling, we’re summoning up all the energy we can to face down what’s coming, because we know that one of the sharpest weapons against fascism is publishing the truth.
There are many terrifying planks to the Trump agenda, and we plan to devote ourselves to reporting thoroughly on each one and, crucially, covering the movements resisting them. We also recognize that Trump is a dire threat to journalism itself, and that we must take this seriously from the outset.
After the election, the four of us sat down to have some hard but necessary conversations about Truthout under a Trump presidency. How would we defend our publication from an avalanche of far right lawsuits that seek to bankrupt us? How would we keep our reporters safe if they need to cover outbreaks of political violence, or if they are targeted by authorities? How will we urgently produce the practical analysis, tools and movement coverage that you need right now — breaking through our normal routines to meet a terrifying moment in ways that best serve you?
It will be a tough, scary four years to produce social justice-driven journalism. We need to deliver news, strategy, liberatory ideas, tools and movement-sparking solutions with a force that we never have had to before. And at the same time, we desperately need to protect our ability to do so.
We know this is such a painful moment and donations may understandably be the last thing on your mind. But we must ask for your support, which is needed in a new and urgent way.
We promise we will kick into an even higher gear to give you truthful news that cuts against the disinformation and vitriol and hate and violence. We promise to publish analyses that will serve the needs of the movements we all rely on to survive the next four years, and even build for the future. We promise to be responsive, to recognize you as members of our community with a vital stake and voice in this work.
Please dig deep if you can, but a donation of any amount will be a truly meaningful and tangible action in this cataclysmic historical moment.
We’re with you. Let’s do all we can to move forward together.
With love, rage, and solidarity,
Maya, Negin, Saima, and Ziggy