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There was an article on Yahoo Finance about a soon to be published article by UC Santa Clara professor Meir Statman in which he calls for a mandatory savings plan for American workers along the lines of what already exists in the UK.
Factors that go into the plus column for the idea are that collectively we lack the discipline to put away what we need for retirement and the plan offers a proactive solution to the probability of social security not being able to fulfill all of its promises.
The first negative that comes to mind is what strikes me as an un-American heavy government hand in saying what people must do with some portion of their income. Some of the comments alluded to other more practical drawbacks like the unfortunate reality that there are people who won't need to plan on living to 90 (anything is possible of course but in some families people die very young).
Another drawback is perhaps not being able to save up an emergency fund which some people would say needs to be done before starting a retirement fund. A related example, I was laid off from a job in September 2001. I knew about a year and half ahead of time that there would be layoffs and that I was a candidate for a layoff. In the face of this I stopped contributing to my 401k to build up something of warchest. I would consider my action to be responsible but would have been hindered if there was some minimum amount of income that I had no say over.
Who knows whether the country would ever adopt a mandatory savings plan (no opt out) but the optimist in me believes that at some point the country will get serious about fixing things and in the past I have thought this to mean that everyone will have to sacrifice something (I still think this) but this article makes me wonder if the people who have been responsible will lose some say over their finances which obviously would not be anything to be optimistic about.
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