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...Here's why: Remember, the biggest factor in whether the 401(k) works as designed has to do with when you retire. If the market rises that year, you're fine. If you retired last year, you're toast. And the chances of your becoming a victim of this huge flaw in the 401(k) plan are pretty high. The market fell in four of the nine years since the beginning of the decade. That means anyone retiring this decade had a nearly 50% chance of leaving work in a down market. In fact, your chances of retiring into...
...What the ERIC plan and others like it are essentially proposing is a form of retirement insurance. So instead of putting 6% of your salary into a 401(k) or some other investment account, each pay period you would send 6% of your check to a retirement-insurance provider. The policy would work similarly to a traditional pension in that it would provide a guaranteed monthly check equal to about a quarter of your final pay, from when you quit working until you die. Some employers might even be willing to pay the annual premium as a perk...
...Would it be feasible, politically or otherwise, to get people to dispense with their 401(k)s? Corporations, for one, are not the least bit interested in taking on pensions again - the cost would be enormous, and the expense makes them less competitive globally. "There are people in the Obama Administration who are supportive of some kind of guaranteed system," says Dean Baker of the Center for Economic and Policy Research. "People should not have to shoulder the risk of a bad turn in the market...
...retirement-savings system is coming. First of all, given the market carnage, there is some backing for the idea - not to mention anger and disappointment among retirees who can't really retire. Recent opinion polls show that people would be willing to give up the flexibility of a 401(k) for a guaranteed return. What's more, the fact that ERIC supports a guaranteed plan is encouraging. "Whether the 401(k) is a perfect plan or even the right plan is something that is being questioned in Congress," says Democratic Representative George Miller of California, chairman of the House Education...
...Staff writer James K. McAuley can be reached at mcauley@fas.harvard...