Wake Up, Washington: Workers’ Retirement Deficit Hits $6.6 Trillion
If you are between ages 32 and 64 and hope to maintain your current standard of living when you retire, you are part of a group that is $6.6 trillion in the hole. That is the nation’s retirement deficit, according to the Center for Retirement Research at Boston College.
That mind-boggling shortfall takes into account all major sources of retirement income and assets: Social Security, traditional pension plans, 401(k)-style plans, and other forms of saving, and housing. But half of the workforce has neither a 401(k) nor a pension to supplement Social Security.
Retirement USA, a coalition that includes the AFL-CIO, is spearheading a “Wake Up, Washington” Month to encourage Americans across the country to tell lawmakers to keep their hands off of Social Security and to fix our patchwork private retirement.
The Assault on Public Employees
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In this cross-post from the Huffington Post and Seminal, AFSCME President Gerald McEntee writes that attacks focusing on public employees are misdirected: the real culprits for the nation’s economic mess are Big Banks and Wall Street.
For more than a generation, America’s working families have been under a constant assault from the CEO’s and extraordinarily wealthy members of our society. While median incomes in the U.S. have stagnated since the mid-1970′s, incomes for those in the top five percent have more than doubled. Since the beginning of our new century—and aided by record-breaking tax cuts—incomes for the top 1 percent have tripled, while working families scrape by, working harder and longer and taking home less than they deserve in pay and benefits.
Last-Ditch Bush Rule Would Threaten Retirement Security
In a last-gasp effort to reward its corporate friends, the Bush administration—on the very day of Barack Obama’s inauguration—proposed a new regulation that could reduce Americans’ retirement security by allowing firms to give financial advice to workers who participate in their 401(k) plans on products where they have a financial interest.
Current laws prohibit such conflicts of interest and the Obama administration has put the regulation on hold.
At a congressional hearing last week, Rep. Robert Andrews (D-N.J.), chairman of the House Education and Labor’s Subcommittee on Health, Employment, Labor and Pensions, said:
If workers receive investment advice, it should be independent and free of conflicts of interest. During a time where American workers have already lost $2 trillion in assets due to last year’s market downturn, exposing their hard-earned retirement savings to greater risk by allowing advisers to offer them conflicted advice is irresponsible and imprudent.
