Seems to me, just to save it all they would have to do is lift the contribution limit and also stop giving it to those who already have hundreds of thousands and don't actually need it. Isn't that common sense?
Mandate that a similar percentage be put into a personal retirement account, with punitive withdrawal penalties at a level high enough to make it impractical to do so.
Somehow that just doesn't seem fair to me. What you're asking, are those who have more money, and we don't know yet what the limit would be between "rich" and "poor", to forget about their own retirement which they have contributed too for many years, and donate it to someone who has less income than they do. Even though I most likely wouldn't fit into that group, I don't like that idea one bit. It once again places one group against another. Not my way of building cooperation.
I'm afraid that truly defining rich and poor is impossible due to cost of living differences across the nation. Here in the Midwest, someone could live pretty nicely off of $50K a year.
That depends if you live in the city or some far corner of the country. I know of places you can live like a king on 50 K, but in the major metro, you would be classed low middle class or borderline poor. If you look East to NY or NJ, you would be in the poor house. You couldn't even support your property tax and utilities.
Hyperbole. Even here - where housing costs are low, one can make it okay on $50K - pay bills, own a (modest) home, be able to save some $, etc., but certainly not live like a king. Would still need to keep to a fairly strict budget to avoid being in debt - other than carrying a mortgage & (a) car loan(s).
in the major
See above. Your general idea is on the right track, but a bit too sweeping of a generalization; COL depends on exact area within broader areas.
Actually, the information is quite readily available both online (you can find out about it at finance.yahoo.com, finance.google.com, and the web sites of many brokers), on the radio (marketplace money on public radio has this info) and in print (Money, Kiplinger's Personal Finance and newspapers all have the information).
However, your original comment ("The availability of information does NOT equate to these people knowing it exists.") is absolutely correct. Just because the information is readily available (when I had Fidelity as the company that had my 401k, I could go for free to a Fidelity office for more info - I did this a couple of times). However, a surprisingly large percent of people who have the information available don't take advantage of it.
Then why has it been so hard to sue employers who've offered 401k plans with nothing but load funds with high expenses? 5.5% S&P 500 index fund with 0.78% expense ratio -- what a bargain!
Jeff has a point, and you do need to put up some numbers, such as the average interest over the past 45 years (and why you assume simple, not compound, interest) and the average payouts from such a savings/ investment plan versus the current Social Security system, for people of different incomes. Otherwise you can't prove one system is better than the other.
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